


God Only Knows

by Linsky



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Still Hockey Players, Angst, First Time, Getting Together, Homophobia, M/M, Mormon!Jonny, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-06-21 00:31:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15545652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: Patrick knows about Jonny’s religion before he’s even had a conversation with him. There aren’t a lot of Mormons who play professional hockey.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note that I am not Mormon! I do have a fair amount of experience with them, and I’ve tried to portray the religion as accurately and sensitively as possible, but if I have erred, please forgive me. You’ll also notice that _Patrick_ is not always sensitive toward things that Mormons might prefer people not make fun of (::cough:: underwear ::cough::).
> 
> I know a lot of people have strong feelings about religion, either for or against. If you’d like to know how I thread the needle of Jonny’s faith and a happy ending for our boys, please feel free to message me on [Tumblr](https://linskywords.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/linskywords).

Patrick knows about Jonny’s religion before he’s even had a conversation with him. There aren’t a lot of Mormons who are serious about hockey—at least, not where Patrick’s from.

“Do you even know what that means?” asks Jimmy, the kid who just told him about Jonny being Mormon.

“Of course I do,” Patrick says, shoving him a little. He’s not an idiot. Obviously he knows what a Mormon is.

He watches Jonny carefully the first time they’re both in the Junior Flyers locker room. He doesn’t do anything weird. Not that Patrick can tell, anyway.

“Hey,” Patrick says when they’ve played a couple of practices together, and Patrick’s given up on Jonny doing anything weird other than looking really serious a lot and scoring goals (though not more goals than Patrick, obviously). “Do you wear funny underwear?”

Jonny stares at him for a second. Then his face goes red. “No,” he says. “Do _you_ wear funny underwear?”

“Nah, dude, my underwear’s awesome,” Patrick says. His has rocket ships on it. He’s not even embarrassed about it.

“Well, then, stay out of mine,” Jonny says, and Patrick rolls his eyes. The dude is no fun. Maybe that’s the Mormon thing.

He sees Jonny a bunch over the next few years—plays with him, then against, hears his name a lot, even though Jonny’s not doing Major Juniors. It’s still a pretty small world if you’re aiming for the NHL. By the time Patrick’s sixteen or seventeen, he’s feeling pretty bad about the underwear question, because apparently being Mormon and a top hockey prospect isn’t the weird kind of thing Patrick thought it was when he was twelve—it’s actually weirder.

It seems to get mentioned in every conversation Patrick hears about upcoming drafts. “That kid from Shattuck, yeah, the Mormon one,” or, “Johnson, sure, and that Mormon kid is going to be up there, too.” It happens enough to be noticeable—but Patrick’s not actually paying that much attention to the draft status of this kid he barely knows. He doesn’t really start to get the extent of it until they’ve both been drafted to the Blackhawks together.

That’s when it turns out Jonny’s kind of a big deal. Well, they both are, obviously; Patrick went first overall in the draft. But there’s all this media attention around Jonny, reporters hungry for him, and it has a different flavor than the media attention that’s around Patrick.

“Yeah, it was a tough decision for sure,” Patrick overhears him saying to a reporter early on in prospect camp—patiently, like maybe this is something he’s said before. “I spent a lot of time thinking about it.”

“Do you feel like the team supported your options?” the woman asks.

“Yeah, for sure,” Jonny says. “They had my back. I mean, they obviously told me about the risks of not playing for two years, but—” and that’s when Patrick really starts to listen, because, not playing for two years? What?

He doesn’t get to hear the rest of the conversation, because that’s when one of the trainers calls him over to talk about his conditioning schedule, but he keeps thinking about it when the team is out for dinner that night. Jonny’s too good to not play for two years—good enough that Patrick’s been a little worried about his own chances. Like, not really, because he knows the team doesn’t have to pick just one new player, but if they did, he’s not sure it would be him over Jonny, you know? And it doesn’t seem like Jonny’s injured or anything. Patrick doesn’t know what kind of injury would take two years to heal from, anyway.

Jonny must be thinking about finishing college. It doesn’t make any sense to Patrick: why would you play for UND when you could be playing in the NHL? But Patrick’s pretty sure Jonny could have played for the Hawks last year, if he wanted to, and he didn’t. Maybe college is really important to him, or something?

Patrick’s kind of surprised at how weird he feels about the idea of Jonny not being on the team this year. Like, Patrick’s only been playing with the guy for a few days. And it’s not actually his business, what Jonny does with his life. But he’s already been thinking about it: what this next year might be like, with him and Jonny playing together, maybe even on the same line, joining forces to bring hockey back to Chicago. It’s crazy, to think that Jonny might want to put that off by two whole years just to get a degree.

Patrick’s totally not going to say anything about it, except then he and Jonny are both early for camp the next morning, and the other couple of guys who are also early are already out on the ice, and Patrick blurts out, “You shouldn’t go back to college.”

Jonny looks up across the locker room, startled. “Huh?”

Patrick makes a face at himself. If he was gonna say something, he could at least have been cool about it. “I just mean, you’re really good. If you’re thinking about doing your last two years…I mean, that’s what life after hockey’s for, right?”

Jonny looks confused. “What are you—oh. The stuff I was saying to the reporter yesterday?”

It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that he was listening. “Um…yeah, just, if you’re thinking about not signing…I think you should, is all.” His cheeks are burning, which is totally lame.

“That wasn’t about college,” Jonny says. He actually seems a little embarrassed: he’s looking down at his bag, which helps Patrick with the whole burning-cheeks thing. “That was about my mission.”

“Your…what?” Patrick has no idea what that even means. It sounds kind of video-game to him. “Like, a quest?”

“No.” Jonny gives him this withering look. “It’s a thing guys in my church are supposed to do, when we’re nineteen. You go away for two years and, like, teach people about the church and stuff. So a lot of people thought I might do one, because everyone’s supposed to, but…” He shrugs. “Two years would be a really long time not to play, you know?”

“Wow. Yeah.” Patrick can’t even imagine that. He goes crazy every summer, when it’s only a few months before hockey starts again. And two years would totally mess up your play. “That’s crazy, that they expected you to do that.”

“It’s not crazy to expect,” Jonny says, a little sharply. Then, biting his lip, “I mean, it’s just a really important part of our church, so…”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” Patrick didn’t mean to, like, insult his religion. “Did you want to go on one?”

Jonny looks up at him sideways. “Kinda? I don’t know. Someday, I’d definitely like to. But it felt like hockey was the more important thing in my life right now.” He looks ahead, at the wall, and now he’s the one whose cheeks are red. “I, uh, prayed about it a lot.”

Patrick feels a squirm in his stomach at how personal the conversation’s getting. It feels like too much for a Thursday morning in a locker room where anyone could come in, or…it just feels like too much. “Sounds like a good idea,” he says, and Jonny nods.

***

Patrick’s not planning to bring it up again. Religion is whatever—it’s private. But they both make the team, obviously (okay, it wasn’t actually obvious, and Patrick dances around for like twenty minutes after they give him his contract, but still, it’s going to be _totally awesome_ ), and they end up rooming together on the road, which means Patrick sees a lot of Jonny’s weirdness.

Like the thing where he doesn’t drink. They’re on their first road trip, and they’ve had a few mandatory team dinners so far, but there’s this whole other thing where the team goes to bars at night, and Patrick loves it. The whole team could never get into bars together in London, and here he’s technically underage but it doesn’t seem to matter when he’s with a whole group of professional hockey players. It’s awesome, and he doesn’t understand why Jonny doesn’t join them.

“I want to be in good shape for skate tomorrow,” Jonny says firmly the first couple of times, and Patrick’s starting to get worried that Jonny’s going to be kind of a stick in the mud. He gets that Jonny takes his conditioning seriously, but they all do, okay? Jonny’s not the only one playing for the NHL here.

“Come on, man,” he says, the third or fourth time. “The whole team’s going. It’s not like we’re, like, sneaking out to party.”

Jonny looks really uncomfortable. It makes his cheeks flush in the same pattern they do when he’s skating hard. “I, actually. I don’t, uh, drink.”

“Oh.” That had never occurred to Patrick, and it sounds super weird for about three seconds before it makes perfect sense with Jonny’s whole deal. “This is about the Mormon thing, right?”

“Yeah.” Jonny’s jaw is out like he’s expecting a fight.

“Well, that’s fine,” Patrick says. “You can just get a soda or something.”

Jonny looks confused, though his jaw does relax a little bit. “But…why would I go?”

“Dude.” Patrick smacks him on the arm a little. “You don’t go for the alcohol.” Well, Patrick does go for the alcohol a little bit. But. “Go for the _team._ ”

Jonny still looks hesitant, which isn’t as good as convinced, but Patrick’s pretty sure he’s going to get there. Patrick’s awesome at convincing people. “What do I wear?”

“I don’t know, clothes?” Patrick gestures at his own body.

Jonny rolls his eyes. “Yeah, ’cause that’s really a look I want to imitate.”

“Hey.” Patrick’s polo shirts are rockin’. Way better than Jonny’s boring plaid. “You take that back.”

Wrestling with Jonny is usually a mistake, Patrick’s learning. Jonny has a better reach than him and refuses to take any contest as less than the absolute most serious thing that he has to win or else die. But Patrick didn’t get to the NHL by backing down from a challenge, and he’s not about to give up now.

They’re kind of late to meet the others in the lobby by the time Jonny lets him out of the headlock. The rest of the team is grumbly and looking like they were about to leave without them, but they brighten up when they see that Jonny’s with him. “Is that Baby Toes?” Sharpy says delightedly, leaping over to give him a noogie.

Sharpy doesn’t get attacked, Patrick notices bitterly. Jonny does shove him off, though, and smooth out his hair, as if a haircut that short can actually get messed up. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, making a face when Seabs greets him a little more nicely than Sharpy does. Patrick knows he’s happy to be there, though. Jonny doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to do.

***

After that Jonny comes out with them kind of often, even if he always orders a water and looks with great suspicion at any drink anyone brings near him, like they might try to make him do shots against his will or something.

“You could at least get a soda,” Patrick says, sipping his Diet Sprite. He couldn’t get anyone to smuggle him a beer tonight.

“Do you know what’s in that crap?” Jonny says.

“Deliciousness?” Patrick’s kind of distracted, because Sharpy’s at the bar talking to two girls, and he keeps looking back over at them. Which probably means trouble. “Fuck,” he mutters.

“What?” Jonny asks, and then he must notice them, too. “What is he…”

“Knowing Sharpy, nothing good,” Patrick says. He’s realizing belatedly that maybe he should sound excited about this. “I mean, if all he did was find us girls, awesome, but…”

“Peeksy! Tazer!” Sharpy says. “Meet Melanie and Priya.”

Patrick’s on the lookout for some kind of prank—he’s only known Sharpy for a couple of months, but he already knows to open doors with caution—but actually it starts to look like Sharpy just found them girls to talk to. Melanie’s a junior in college, and she knows enough about hockey not to think it’s weird that Patrick’s doing this instead of college. Patrick does okay talking to her, and he doesn’t keep track of Jonny and Priya until he notices that Jonny’s gone. Probably he just went to the bathroom, but—

“I don’t know,” Priya says with a shrug when Patrick asks. “He just said he had to go.”

Patrick frowns at the room, wondering if maybe Jonny went back to the hotel, but no, there he is, standing awkwardly near the bar and not talking to anyone. “I’d better see what’s up. Sorry about that,” he says to Melanie with the most charming smile he can put on.

“What the fuck, man?” he asks Jonny when he gets to him.

Jonny looks startled to see him. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, after you got up like a total weirdo, I figured I’d see what’s going on,” Patrick says. “What, did Priya admit to loving refined sugar or something?”

“No,” Jonny says, glaring at a nearby barstool. “She was fine.”

Patrick waits for more, but it doesn’t seem to be coming. “Oookay, then.” He looks back at their table; they’ve definitely lost it to the girls at this point, and he doesn’t really want to go back and join them. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Want to go back to the hotel?”

“Yes,” Jonny says, looking relieved.

Jonny’s pretty quiet on the trip back. When they get back to their room, he says, “You could have picked up that girl if you wanted to.”

“I mean, maybe. I’m not always that good with girls,” Patrick says. It’s sort of a drastic understatement: he remembers in vivid, sickening detail his hands on that girl’s breasts at that NTDP party, the way she’d kissed him eagerly and then gotten more and more frustrated when she realized he wasn’t getting hard. He’s just lucky she didn’t tell anyone on the team. “So what was actually wrong with Priya?” he asks, flopping back onto his bed.

He’s expecting something snippy, or maybe disapproving, but Jonny’s quiet for long moment, and then finally he says, “I’m not supposed to hook up.”

Patrick looks over at him. Jonny’s sitting rigidly, looking down at his hands. “What, like at all?”

“We’re not supposed to have sex until marriage,” Jonny says, raising his eyes to look a challenge at Patrick.

“Wow.” Patrick knew that was a thing for a lot of religions, but he didn’t think people took it that seriously. Technically, Catholics aren’t supposed to have sex before marriage, either—but everyone Patrick knows does, anyway. He had to make up a story about how he lost his virginity to tell the guys in Juniors. 

Patrick did actually have sex once, in London, with this guy he met in a club, and it was stupid and reckless and still makes heat curl through his belly when he thinks about it. He wonders if it’s worse, knowing you can have sex with the person you want but not until you marry her, or knowing that anytime you do you’re risking—

“You can still, like, make out, though, right?” Patrick says. “Anything that isn’t—you know?”

Jonny’s embarrassed look is kind of hilarious. “In theory. But—that’s kind of a bad idea, you know? Like, if I want to do it this way. It wouldn’t be smart to do that to myself.”

Patrick knows a lot about things that aren’t smart. He almost went back to that club a bunch of times before he left Ontario. “That’s, like, insanely committed.”

“Yeah, well.” Jonny’s not looking at him, but his eyes have that dark serious look they get a lot, like he’s looking at his goals in front of him and getting ready to, like, set them on fire with the power of his thoughts, or something. “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

“I get that.” Patrick does. He believes in God, probably, even if he’s not sure about everything the Catholic Church has to say. He can’t imagine Jonny having a religion and not taking it seriously. “You can date, though, right?”

Jonny grimaces. “Yeah, if I ever have time.”

“Fair point.” They hardly have time for anything that isn’t hockey and the Hawks. Patrick’s not sure why he feels relieved about that: it’s just a weird idea, Jonny finding some nice Mormon girl and getting married and having kids or whatever. They’re way too young for that. “We’ve got years for that.”

“Exactly,” Jonny says, sounding more relaxed, and Patrick hasn’t brushed his teeth or showered or anything, but he lets his eyes slide closed anyway.

***

There’s other weird stuff, usually when Patrick isn’t expecting it. The no alcohol and no hookups thing seem like standard morality shit, but not being able to spend money on Sundays is just inconvenient.

“What if I buy a breakfast sandwich and let you have half of it?” Patrick says one Sunday on the road, when they’re flying from Winnipeg to Calgary and Jonny’s morning grumpiness is probably making clouds gather over the airport.

“Can’t let you spend money for me,” Jonny says, lips thin, and Patrick knows it’s gotta suck more for Jonny than it does for him, having grumpy Jonny next to him on the plane is no picnic, either.

“What does he usually do on Sundays?” Duncs asks once they’re on the plane, when Patrick’s fled his usual row with Jonny to sit with the vets.

“We have a pretty well-stocked kitchen,” Seabs says. “He tries to remember to bring food or buy food on Saturdays when we’re on the road, but I guess he forgot.”

Patrick has noticed that: Jonny eats a lot of protein bars. He hadn’t made the Sunday connection, though.

Jonny’s still grumpy by the time they get to Calgary. They have a game tonight, and Patrick’s wondering if he should say something—it’s not like Jonny to jeopardize his play, but maybe hunger is messing with his thinking or something. Also Patrick would really like Jonny to stop biting his head off every time Patrick says something or breathes too loudly, or, you know, exists.

“Will you eat some fucking food already?” is maybe not the best way to go about it, but it’s what comes out the third time Jonny yells at Patrick for basically having belongings in their hotel room. As if Jonny’s ever tidy in any way at all.

Jonny’s eyes get flinty and dangerous. “I’ll figure out my own food, okay.”

They have a team lunch in the hotel event room, and Patrick’s stressed about it even though he knows he shouldn’t care: if Jonny wants to be stubborn about stupid rules that probably aren’t supposed to apply when you are literally starving, that’s his problem. At this point he wants to yell at Jonny more than he wants to help him, anyway. But fortunately, when they come into the event room, Jonny has a put-upon expression but actually eats his food.

Patrick’s not sitting with him, obviously. He knows better after the last six hours. He eats with Sharpy and Burs and manages to forget all about Jonny and his dumbness, until they’re basically done eating and Jonny comes up to him and says, “Hey.”

Patrick looks up. Jonny looks sheepish, which is a start. “Yeah?”

“I just—wanted to say I was sorry about this morning.” His face is screwed up, like the words taste bad in his mouth.

“Wow, an actual apology. I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.”

“Shut up.” Now there’s the glower Patrick’s come to know and love. “Seabs told me to do it.”

“Seabs is a wise man.” Patrick kicks out the chair next to him. “Want some of my rice pudding?”

“No,” Jonny says, though he’s staring at it with what might be longing.

“It has protein powder in it,” Patrick says, and Jonny still looks stubborn but does take a spoonful like two minutes later, like he hopes Patrick isn’t paying attention anymore. Patrick is very magnanimous and doesn’t call him out on it.

***

So the no-money-on-Sundays rule is a huge pain. But the special underwear is _awesome._

“Oh my god,” Patrick says, the first time he comes out of the bathroom sooner than Jonny was expecting and sees Jonny in the white undershirt and boxers. “You _do_ have magic underwear! I knew it!”

“They are not _magic._ ” Jonny’s glare is briefly obstructed by the shirt he’s pulling over his head. “They’re just underwear, jeez.”

“No, oh my god, they’re totally magic.” Patrick has never been so happy. “Is this the secret to your hockey success? Is that why you didn’t want to tell me about them when we were twelve?”

“No, for crap’s sake,” Jonny says. He’s not making eye contact with Patrick; he’s rummaging through his suitcase. “And I didn’t even have them back then. We don’t get them till we go through the temple.”

Jonny’s facing away from him, bending over a little, and Patrick usually tries really hard not to look, but Jonny’s ass outlined in the white is really—not nothing.

“Do you wear them all the time?” Patrick asks, unable to help himself.

“Not for hockey.” Jonny sounds grumbly about having to talk about this. “But otherwise, yeah. We’re not supposed to take them off.”

“Huh.” Then, as it occurs to him: “You do wash them, right?”

Jonny turns an outraged look at him as he pulls his pants up. “Yes, _Patrick_ , I do wash them.”

“I’m just saying,” Patrick says, not even bothering to hide his smirk. “If they’re magic, you might not want to—”

“Okay,” Jonny says, and lunges at him so that Patrick has to scrabble away. “You want to talk underwear?” he asks as he tries to pin Patrick to the bed. “Because I’m not the only one here with underwear.”

Patrick is laughing and struggling for air and trying to fight Jonny off him all at the same time. He’s been trying to bulk up the whole season, but Jonny definitely has at least twenty pounds on him. “Pretty sure we were talking about—magic underwear, so—”

“I’ll show you magic,” Jonny growls, which doesn’t make sense, but he’s got Patrick pretty much pinned now and is trying to get a grip on the back of his boxers. Patrick’s wriggling, fighting to keep Jonny from what’s probably gonna be the world’s worst wedgie, and then Jonny’s hand slips inside Patrick’s sweats and—

Patrick gasps at the full-body shudder that goes through him when Jonny’s fingers skid over his crack. “ _Dude,_ ” he says, shoving at him a second too late, and Jonny lets himself get shoved, open-mouthed and horrified.

“I’m sorry,” Jonny says. “I didn’t—”

Patrick’s heart is racing so fast. “Whatever,” he says. “Just because I’m better than you at wrestling.”

It doesn’t quite make any sense, but it succeeds at getting the horrified look out of Jonny’s eyes. “You are _not._ ”

“Suuure,” Patrick says, taunting, relieved, and normally that would make Jonny retaliate, but not this time. He just harrumphs and goes back to his suitcase.

Patrick turns away, that shivery feeling still winding around his middle and keeping him from catching his breath. He can’t decide if he wants to burn it out of himself or if he wants to curl around it and keep it forever.

***

He worries that he might have fucked something up after that. But they back to Chicago, and Jonny texts him about coming over to play video games like usual. It’s a relief; it’s not like he needs Jonny—he has other friends on the team—but it’s different with Jonny. They’re both in the same spot, more than anyone else on the team: all of Chicago looking to them to be the ones to turn things around. It would suck, to not have Jonny anymore.

Also it’s really hilarious when Patrick beats Jonny at video games. Which Jonny claims never happens, unless Patrick is cheating, but “having a fan on in the next room” or “not having the blinds all the way shut” does not count as cheating, _Jonny._

“Aren’t you supposed to be all moral and shit?” Patrick asks when Jonny’s just declared that one of their games doesn’t count because Seabs came in the door at a key moment.

“That’s why I’m not the one cheating,” Jonny says, and Patrick rolls his eyes so hard he thinks he strains something. But he settles back against the cushions for another round.


	2. Chapter 2

They don’t make the playoffs that first year. Patrick’s bummed but not as devastated as he could be. Everyone’s been repeating “rebuilding” all year, and he knows this team is good. They’ll make it next time.

“Yeah, we will,” Jonny says fiercely on locker clean-out day. He has that fervor in his eyes while he says it, the one that makes all the contradictions in his life make sense. When he looks like that, it’s easy for Patrick to believe he’s fully devoted to hockey and fully devoted to his church and fully devoted to whatever else he cares about. Devotion is what Jonny’s made of.

Patrick goes home for the summer and hangs out with his family and trains a whole ton. It’s weird and jarring to be away from the team, more so than it ever was in Juniors. It reminds him more than anything of the way he felt when he left home to play with Honeybaked for the first time: homesick, always looking over his shoulder for people who aren’t there. He spends a lot of time on the group text.

It’s enough time that his sisters notice, which is unfortunate, because he forgot what monsters they can be when they think they know something.

“So, who’re you texting?” Jess says, one afternoon when they’re all lying around the living room.

Actually it was Jonny, but he doesn’t need to tell them that. “Just the team,” he says.

“Are you sure?” Jess says. “Are you sure there isn’t someone… _special?_ ”

“Jesus, no,” he says, hoping his ears aren’t going red. “Someone special? What are you, eighty?”

“I don’t know,” Jackie says. “I bet it’s a girl.”

Erica looks up with a gleam in her eyes. She’s definitely the scariest one of the three of them. If Patrick were going to be scared of them, which he’s not. “So who’s the girl?” she asks.

Patrick rolls his eyes. “There’s no girl.”

“But you would tell us if there were, right, Patty?” Jackie says, batting her eyelashes.

This isn’t the first time he’s wanted to tell them. That very first trip home after playing with Honeybaked, when his mind was seared with the image of Henry Lucas peeling off his shorts in the locker room and he felt like everyone who looked at him would be able to tell. Or last summer, when he could still feel the guy’s hands on his body, the one in Ontario who still shows up in his dreams sometimes. And now, when they think they’re teasing him something real, something normal siblings can have fun with, he wants to open his mouth and tell them that there’ll never be a girl, that there’ll probably never be anyone—but his throat closes on the words before they can come out.

“Like I could hide it from you,” he says instead. “You guys are menaces.”

“Glad you recognize that,” Erica says, satisfied.

There’s nothing real to tell them, anyway; it doesn’t matter that he’s gay when he’s probably not going to hook up with anyone for years and years. Or that’s what he thinks until later that summer, when he’s hanging out with his friends and there’s this kid, Jake, who Patrick hasn’t seen before, and he stares a little too long while Patrick’s taking off his shirt at the pool one day. Patrick pauses with his shirt halfway down his biceps, and they lock eyes.

Twenty minutes later they’re making out behind a utility shed, and Patrick’s never been so glad to put his hands on someone else’s skin. “D’you like to take it?” Jake asks against his mouth, and Patrick says, “ _Yes_ ” before he’s even properly heard the question. But he doesn’t want to take it back, especially not when he’s spread out over Jake’s bed later that day with three of Jake’s fingers sunk into him.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he says afterward, soaked in sweat and a vague feeling of shame.

“Dude, I’m going to West Point this fall,” Jake says. “You can’t tell anyone, either.”

It works out nicely, even if it’s not a big thing. Patrick gets to feel like his body is being set on fire a few times a week, and Jake seems to enjoy himself, too. And if sometimes Patrick closes his eyes while they’re kissing and sees someone else…well, random shit always comes into your mind when you’re fucking. He doesn’t have to let it mean anything.

He kind of starts to think Jonny had a point about hooking up being dangerous when he goes back to Chicago, though, because if it was hard last year to go without sex, it’s way harder now that he’s used to getting it on the regular. He’s, like, attuned to other people’s bodies now in a way he wasn’t before, and when he doesn’t get to touch them it makes him ache.

It makes him jumpy, too, in ways that aren’t really cool, especially when all he’s doing is hanging out with Jonny in the living room of his brand-new condo. “Are you trying to lose?” Jonny asks suspiciously halfway through the afternoon, because if there’s one thing Jonny hates more than losing, it’s the idea that someone else is doing it on purpose.

“Ugh, sorry, I just feel really weird,” Patrick says, and Jonny immediately looks concerned and leans over to feel his forehead.

“You don’t feel warm,” Jonny says, which is weird because Patrick feels like he’s suddenly burning up. “Are you coming down with something?”

“Um.” Jonny is really close and Patrick may have swallowed his own tongue.

“You should have some liquids,” Jonny says, getting up to get him something, and as soon as he’s out of the room Patrick buries his face in a pillow and lets out a groan.

He doesn’t want Jonny to know about this. He doesn’t want anyone to know about this, really, but Jonny would be worse than anyone else. Patrick knows enough about Mormonism to know that. The idea of Jonny looking at him with—not disgust; Patrick thinks he could at least hide the disgust; but with that conflicted look he gets sometimes, like he doesn’t want to be a dick about it but he also can’t be okay with…yeah. Patrick doesn’t want him to know.

Jonny makes him take, like, half his body weight in zinc and asks him three times at camp the next day if he’s feeling okay, until finally Patrick threatens to choke him with his own zinc tablets. “I just want to make sure you’re okay,” Jonny says, and Patrick wishes he could actually hate it more than he does.

Overall, though, it’s pretty awesome coming back to the team and not being a rookie anymore. He’s not worried about making friends or making the team or anything like that, and he’s slotting into a spot that’s started to feel comfortable now. And he’s working his ass off, but that’s something he enjoys, too. They’ve got a great team this year; he’s looking forward to proving it.

Their first real season game, Jonny’s almost late for their flight to New York, rushing in at the last minute and apologizing to everyone. “Where were you?” Patrick asks when they’re finally settled in their seats.

Jonny gives that tiny pause he usually does when he’s about to say something people might think is weird. “I was at the temple in Glenview,” he says.

“Oh,” Patrick says. “Was it, like, a service, or…”

“We don’t have services in the temple,” Jonny says, relaxing into something more scornful, even though, hello, how was Patrick supposed to know that? Temple totally sounds like a place where you’d have services. “It’s more like, you go there for important stuff like marriage, or to ask important questions, stuff like that.”

“Oh, okay,” Patrick says. “So did you have a…”

“No. I just, uh, actually I like to go there at the start of the season,” Jonny says. “Just—something important is starting. It’s good to, you know, talk to God about that.”

It’s kind of endearing, mostly because of how uncomfortable Jonny sounds when he says it out loud. But also it’s really nice to think of Jonny thinking about their season that way. “Do you not pray, like, normally?” Patrick asks. He knows Jonny does; he sees him kneeling, every night in their shared hotel rooms.

“No, of course we do,” Jonny says. “But at the temple, it’s like…it’s like God is closer, you know? Like there’s less keeping you from him.”

It’s weird to hear Jonny just talking about this stuff, but less weird than Patrick would have expected. They’re speaking quietly, and the rumble of the plane is loud around them, and the cabin lights are dimmed. “That’s pretty cool,” Patrick says.

“Yeah?” Jonny says, kind of shy. There’s a trace of a smile in his voice.

“Did you always know you, like. Believed?” Patrick asks.

Jonny thinks for a second. “No. I mean, when I was a kid, I thought it was true because kids believe anything, you know? And then when I was fourteen, it all started to seem so…I don’t know. Far-fetched.”

Patrick hums. He knows that feeling.

“So I asked. I prayed a lot, and read a lot, and tried to figure stuff out. Most of the time it felt like I was just asking the empty air, but then…” His voice drops further, so that Patrick has to lean in a little to hear it. “There was this one night where I was asking, and it suddenly felt like I knew. Like God had heard what I was asking and was telling me, just this once, everything I needed to know. It was the craziest feeling. I know it’s not, like empirical evidence, and it never happened again like that but…yeah. I know now. I know it’s true.”

Patrick’s scalp is tingling, from the base of his head up to his crown. “I’ve…never felt like that,” he says.

Jonny turns to look at him, and when Patrick meets his gaze it feels like lightning over his skin. It makes him suck in a breath, his whole system suddenly shocked into change. “Maybe you will someday, about something,” Jonny says.

Patrick nods, not trusting his voice. Not trusting any part of himself right now.

Jonny goes to sleep not long after that. Patrick sits back in his chair, Jonny’s arm warm against his on the arm rest, but sleep doesn’t come. Instead he tries to remember what it was like back when he used to pray, when he was a kid. It’s not something he does much anymore, and he doesn’t have a place like Jonny does where God is supposed to be closer to earth. But the cabin is dark around him, dazzling light just inches away on the other side of the window shades, and they’re thousands of feet in the sky. It’s a good a time as any to try.

_Please,_ he thinks desperately, directing his thoughts to anyone who’s listening. _Please, please don’t let me fall in love with him._

***

Patrick doesn’t hook up with anyone in Chicago. It wouldn’t be safe. He plays a lot of hockey, and watches the Hawks creep toward a playoff berth, and tries not to look up too fast when Jonny comes into a the room.

“Peeksy,” Sharpy says, dropping down next to him in the rink lounge one day. “Abby and I are worried about you. Where is the future Mrs. Peeksy we’ll all come to pity and love?”

Patrick makes a face and tries to shrug out from under Sharpy’s arm without Sharpy noticing. But that is, of course, impossible. “Why don’t you bug Jonny about this shit? He dates less than I do.” At least, Patrick thinks so. He’s not actually sure.

“Yeah, ’cause I really want that lecture,” Sharpy says dryly. “I’m sure dating is immoral and sent by the devil—”

That’s not fair, and Patrick opens his mouth to say so, before he decides it’s smarter not to engage. But actually Jonny doesn’t lecture about that stuff. He’ll go on for hours about protein shakes and new-age herbal supplements and the importance of regular sleep, but he never touches anything that might be religious. It’s even more true now that he’s captain.

“Anyway, he doesn’t need my help,” Sharpy says. “That church he goes to is basically a meat market.”

Patrick takes a moment to wonder if they’ve changed topics, because—“What?”

“You know, the singles ward,” Sharpy says, and then, when Patrick continues to look blank, “Did you not know?”

Patrick shakes his head, feeling like the conversation is about to got much worse.

“Yeah, Mormons have, like, different congregations for the single people and the married ones,” Sharpy says. “So that they’re better able to pair up nice and young and start having their passels of kids. I give Jonny a year, maybe two before someone’s nabbed him.”

Patrick feels sick. Not that he—he just feels sick, is all. It’s fine. He can keep it together. “Dibs on best man,” he manages to say, which makes Sharpy squawk.

“You can’t just call dibs on best man,” Sharpy says. “It’s all about the _quality_ of the _man,_ Peeks,” and it’s the perfect moment for Patrick to roll his eyes and make his escape.

It just—it doesn’t seem possible, is all, that Jonny’s going to marry someone soon. He never even talks to any girls. Patrick’s kind of paranoid about it for a few weeks, but the only women Jonny talks to are, like, their trainers and waitresses and stuff, so Patrick decides he’s probably safe.

Or, not safe. It’s not like he has a stake in this. He just…doesn’t want things to change. And Jonny with a wife and kids would definitely change things. The two of them have been spending so much time together lately: swinging by each other’s condos randomly, spending hours trash talking each other over video games. It’s not ridiculous that Patrick wouldn’t want to lose that.

He swings by Jonny’s condo earlier than usual one day in January. He doesn’t usually come by in the mornings unless they’re going to skate together, but he’s feeling kind of—he got to go home for Christmas, but only for like 36 hours, which was enough to make him want more of his family but not to get it, and he’s probably not going to see them again for another month or more because of his dad’s work schedule. Patrick loves being a hockey player and wouldn’t trade his life for anyone’s, but sometimes it just really sucks.

“Hey,” Patrick says, trying not to look too pathetic when Jonny answers the door. “Just wondering if you want to go to breakfast or something?”

“Oh,” Jonny says. He looks really uncomfortable. “I would, but…”

He’s dressed really nicely, in slacks and a button-down shirt. He has a date, or—“Oh, fuck,” Patrick says. “It’s Sunday isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Jonny says, looking guilty, like he made this happen.

“No, shit, I just forgot.” It’s hard for the days of the week to mean anything, in their line of work. Well, maybe Patrick can go hang out at Sharpy’s or something. It’s not the same as being with Jonny, but—

Jonny shuffles his feet a little. “You could—come with me, if you want.”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. He’s literally never thought about going to a Mormon church service in his life. But he’d be going with Jonny, and he has been kind of curious, ever since Sharpy said… “Yeah, why not,” he says.

He starts to regret his decision as soon as they’re in the car. This is going to be super awkward. “Do I need to know stuff?” he asks. “Like, when to stand, when to kneel…”

“No, it’ll be really obvious,” Jonny says. “It’s not formal or anything.”

“Okay,” Patrick says. “So do you go to services a lot?”

Jonny shrugs a shoulder while he drives. “Whenever I can. It’s tough with our schedule. But it’s important to try to be a part of the community, you know? There’s all sorts of social stuff, and also support for people who need it. They really try to make you feel at home.”

_The team makes you feel at home,_ Patrick thinks, and feels immediately guilty about it. There’s no rule that says Jonny can only have one community in Chicago. But Patrick doesn’t like the idea that there’s this other group of people Jonny thinks of as his.

It makes Patrick feel weirdly possessive as they walk into church together. Like, _look, I’m with him, he’s mine, too._ He hopes Jonny can’t tell he’s thinking it, because it’s super embarrassing, but it still gives him a flash of satisfaction every time someone turns to look at them.

They’re all really young. Patrick is surprised at first, and then he remembers what Sharpy said, about this being the singles ward. Everyone here looks like they could be a college student, but they’re all dressed really nicely, in slacks or skirts or dresses. Patrick wishes he weren’t wearing jeans, especially as people turn to stare at them as they walk through the room.

It’s not just the girls. Guys are turning, too, and Patrick realizes after a minute that it’s partly because of him. He hadn’t thought of Mormons as people who’d be super into hockey, but he guesses people who go to church with Jonny would probably know the Hawks. A couple of the guys look like they might ask Patrick to sign something, if Jonny weren’t glaring at them so hard.

“Chill out, they were nice,” Patrick says to Jonny when they’ve gone past. He doesn’t mind the _guys_ talking to Jonny.

“This is _church,_ ” Jonny says, and Patrick laughs.

The girls are worse. They smile at Patrick too, but they smile way longer at Jonny. Patrick has the sickening realization that Jonny is probably the best catch in the room—a hockey player already earning close to a million bucks a year, and also, just look at him. Of course the girls are all over him. A lot of them are really pretty, and they touch his arm and tilt their heads and Jonny’s not any more than polite to them but Patrick hates every second of it.

He’s glad when the service starts and the girls can’t talk to them anymore. But someday soon there’ll be a girl who doesn’t just get Jonny’s polite smile; someday one of these girls will walk into Jonny’s life and be there to stay.

Patrick bows his head when the rest of the room does, but his prayer is simpler than the one the guy at the podium is saying. It’s the same prayer from the plane, whittled down to its simplest form: _please._

_Please let me survive this._

***

The service itself is pretty chill. Patrick’s surprised by that; he used to go to church with his family all the time, and it was always really fancy, lots of repeated prayers and priests intoning things. This is just a few people from the audience getting up and giving talks, and then they sing some hymns that Patrick sort of fakes his way through. Jonny tells him he can even take communion if they want, but Patrick thinks about what Father O’Brien in Buffalo would say if he knew, and lets the bread and water pass him by.

They get waylaid on their way out by this older guy who doesn’t look like he belongs in this congregation of college-age kids. “Brother Toews!” the guy says, which is maybe the best thing that’s ever happened. “No game today?”

Jonny winces kind of guiltily. “No, sir.”

Patrick’s not sure he likes the expression the guy’s making: like he had more to say but isn’t saying it, and he wants everyone around to know it. “Well, it was good to see you at a sacrament meeting,” the guy says. “Maybe next time you can stay for the lesson.” He shoots a look at Patrick as they go by.

“So who was that dick?” Patrick asks once they’re outside.

Jonny’s eyes go wide and he looks around quickly to make sure no one heard, even though Patrick’s not an idiot and no one did. Though that dude would probably deserve it if so. “He’s not—that was the stake president.”

“Well, he seemed like a dick,” Patrick says.

Jonny makes a face. “He doesn’t like that I play games on Sundays.”

“Why? Because—oh.” Patrick hadn’t even thought about the money thing extending to games. But of course Jonny gets paid for them, and kind of a lot. “But…they’re _games,_ ” he says.

“I know, right?” Jonny says. “I can’t just not.”

Patrick has a flash of fierce proprietary gladness over that. He feels bad for it the next moment, but he can’t quite push the feeling away: the triumph that Jonny’s choosing the team over everything else.

He feels super shitty about that, and maybe that’s what makes him take a while to ask the question he wants to ask. Or maybe he would have felt too awkward to ask right after church either way. In any case, he doesn’t bring it up until a couple of nights later, when they’re on the road again.

“So, those girls at church,” Patrick says when it’s late at night and they’ve already lying in their beds but haven’t quite turned the light out yet. His stomach is jumping already just from saying the words. “Are you, like. Dating any of them?”

“No,” Jonny says. “I mean, I’ve taken some of them out. It’s kind of rude if you never ask, I guess? But I don’t really have time to date anyone seriously like that.”

Patrick’s next breath comes so much easier, and he can’t quite lie and tell himself it doesn’t. “That sucks,” he says.

“Yeah. My parents are pretty bummed about it. It was one of the reasons they didn’t want me to join the NHL.”

“They—what?” Patrick’s eyes are wide, and he’s kind of glad Jonny can’t see his face. “They didn’t want you to join?”

“I mean, they knew I wanted it, and it’s obviously amazing in a lot of ways, but…” Jonny shifts, his blankets rustling. “They thought it was going to keep me from a lot of other things I’m supposed to be doing. Like going on a mission, and keeping the sabbath, and starting a family.”

“Wow, you guys are really serious about family,” Patrick says. Not that he’s not—but it’s a little different in his case. He knows he’s not going to have one of his own anytime soon.

“Yeah, it’s—cultural, I guess,” Jonny says. “It’s not like it’s a sin not to have one, but it’s definitely seen as a good thing. In the scriptures, I mean.”

He sounds embarrassed at the end of it, the way he usually does when he’s sharing church stuff that’s a little too…religious, maybe. “And you want kids,” Patrick says.

“Yeah,” Jonny says softly. “I really do.”

“You could—even if you don’t get married,” Patrick says. He doesn’t know why he’s saying this. He must be crazy. “You have the money. You could always adopt, or get a surrogate. When you’re older, I mean.”

There’s silence from the other side of the room. “We’re not actually…supposed to do that,” Jonny says finally. “Have kids outside of marriage.”

Patrick frowns. “Even if you’re adopting?”

“It’s not about that—not about sex before marriage or anything,” Jonny says. “It’s just, that’s a scriptural thing, too. It’s actually a thing we believe, that children have the right to be raised by a mother and a father.”

Something cinches around Patrick’s stomach, tight and cold. “But that’s…” he says, and that sentence dies. “What, so if there’s a divorce, or a parent dies, they get kicked out of your church?”

“No!” Jonny sounds shocked. He leans up on an elbow to look at Patrick across the gap between the beds. Patrick looks back, even though he doesn’t quite want to. “We would never—it’s just, it’s better with both parents. Things happen, whatever, the church will support you through it, but you aren’t supposed to _choose_ that.”

Patrick’s struggling to breathe against the pressure he feels all along his abdomen. “I have this friend,” he says after a few strangled moments. “In Buffalo, this guy who’s gay, and I know he wants kids. He’s told me about it. It kinda sounds like you’re saying, whatever way he does it…if he’s alone, or even if he has a partner, it’ll still be…”

There’s another long silence. Then Jonny says, “I guess, if I had to talk to him about it, I’d say that it’s none of my business.”

Patrick nods, lips pressed together hard. He feels like he should say something else—prove that he’s fine, that what they’re talking about doesn’t matter to him—but he can’t.

“Do you want to get the lights?” he asks after a minute.

There’s a rustle of Jonny leaning over, and then the room is dark, and Patrick can turn and press his face into the pillow and close his eyes tight.


	3. Chapter 3

There are a few times when it occurs to Patrick that maybe he should pull back from Jonny. The two of them are so close, and they spend so much time together, and sometimes it just gets to be a little—but Jonny’s threaded through so many parts of his life. There are so many opportunities to turn towards him rather than away, and Patrick isn’t strong enough to look elsewhere when Jonny shines brighter than anything else around him. It’s just easier not to change things.

But then it’s March, and they’re battling tooth and nail for a spot in the playoffs, and suddenly there’s a girl waiting for Jonny outside the locker room.

Patrick doesn’t notice her right away. Patrick’s family is there, too, and he’s busy hugging them and accepting their congrats and doesn’t pay attention to the girl in the cardigan standing nearby. Then Jonny comes out and gives her a hug, lifting her onto her tiptoes, and Patrick stops talking in the middle of a sentence.

“So? What was that about the Red Wings’ D?” Jessica asks, and Patrick has to drag his eyes away.

“Um, yeah, obviously no match for us,” he says, probably nothing like what he was saying before, but he doesn’t remember. Jonny’s still talking to the girl, who’s tilting her head up like she’s trying to show the whole hallway her neck. “So, did you guys eat?”

Audrey starts coming around to team events after that. Not to bar nights, obviously—but to a team party at Seabs’ place, and then a charity thing they do with the animal rescue. She smiles a lot, is friendly with everyone, and likes to hold onto Jonny’s arm like she needs it to keep upright. Or maybe like she really likes the feel of his biceps. Patrick can empathize.

It makes Patrick hesitate before inviting Jonny over—not that he thinks Jonny’s always busy with her or anything, but there’s a chance he will be, and Patrick doesn’t want to hear Jonny tell him he’s choosing Audrey over him. Which is ridiculous, he knows, because Jonny is a decent person who honors his commitments and it wouldn’t be about which person is more important to him. But still, Patrick doesn’t want to hear it. 

Jonny does show up uninvited a couple of times, snarking about how, what, has Patrick forgotten his phone number? Which makes Patrick feel better. But then Patrick wonders if maybe he’s coming over because Audrey is busy that night, or if Jonny just came from a date with her, and he can’t get her out of his head.

“So, Audrey seems nice,” Patrick says finally on one of the days Jonny comes over, when the ghost of her presence starts to drive him a little too crazy.

“She is,” Jonny says, distracted by picking his Mario Kart character. “She’s training to be a concert pianist.”

“Wow.” That’s…okay, that’s actually really impressive. Patrick can barely pick out Heart and Soul. “Is she good?”

“Yeah, she’s super talented. She’s going to a grad program at Julliard next year.”

Patrick’s heart does a little jump at that. Julliard is far. If she goes to Julliard, she and Jonny will have to break up. Unless they’re super serious by then, and they get engaged or…

_Shut the fuck up,_ he tells himself. Even if they break up, Jonny will just start dating someone else, some nice Mormon girl who can marry him in front of his family and friends and start having his children. Patrick should want that for him, probably, but in reality he wants to put it off as long as possible. The longer Jonny can take to find the right girl, the longer he can stay single, and the longer he can stay Patrick’s. At least as much as he is anyone else’s.

Patrick should maybe learn to aim higher. But he’s a gay player in the NHL. There’s nowhere _to_ aim, really.

He gets over himself enough to text Jonny the next time they have a free afternoon. _Dinner later?_ he sends, and he gets a response right away: _sure 6ish?_

It’s a fast response, and it’s a positive response, and Patrick’s feeling pretty good until he shows up at Jonny’s condo and Audrey’s on the other side of the door.

It’s clear pretty quickly that she’s on her way out. But then Jonny’s holding out her coat, and she’s putting it on, and she leans up and kisses him goodbye and—

Patrick is a professional athlete. His limbs are supposed to answer him when he tells them things. But he stares at her instead of moving out of the way to let her leave, and when he does move, he bumps into the doorframe and gets a bruise on his hip.

“Dude, what’s with you?” Jonny asks, kicking him a little when they’re sitting on the couch, trying to figure out what kind of food to order. Or, Jonny’s trying, and Patrick’s answering everything like five beats later than he should.

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep,” Patrick says, and that gets him a lecture on how important it is to keep a regular sleep schedule, especially if they’re headed into the playoffs.

He manages to be a halfway normal human while they eat, and then while they watch game tape, even though he knows Jonny’s weirded out by how little he’s arguing with things. He just feels so antsy, like he needs to run or fight someone or… “I should probably get going,” he says when they hit a stopping point, and Jonny throws him a look.

“Are you going to be able to sleep okay?” Jonny asks. “You can stay here if you want.”

Patrick would normally say yes. He loves staying over at Jonny’s—loves the promise that he’ll see Jonny first thing in the morning, sleepy-eyed and mumbling over his uncaffeinated tea. But right now he just needs to get away. “Nah, you’re right about building up good habits,” Patrick says, and he says goodbye and gets in a cab to go home, except when the cabbie asks where he’s going, Patrick gives a street in Boystown.

His heart starts racing as soon as the cab pulls away from the curb. He’s never done this. He _doesn’t_ do this, because it’s dumb. But he doesn’t tell the cabbie to turn around.

He’s not really dressed for this, and he feels stupid when he’s standing on the edge of a crowded club in his normal jeans and polo with a baseball cap pulled low over his face and a black X on his hand. But there’s loud music and there’s a dance floor and he just—he wants to get on it and lose track of absolutely everything else.

It works, for a while. He gets into the sweaty physical zone that comes with a good workout, only this one has an undercurrent of pounding bass and sex. He ends up making out with this tall guy, a little pushy, a little forceful in a way that makes Patrick push back and breathe harder. It’s not Jonny but it’s something, someone Patrick can have even for a few minutes, and then he sees someone raising a camera phone.

Patrick flinches back so hard the guy looks baffled. “What?” the guy shouts at him over the music.

“Nothing,” Patrick says. It’s probably fine. The guy was probably taking a picture of a friend, or a selfie, or looking at the time, or—“I have to go,” he says to the guy, and doesn’t even look up until he’s out on the street again.

His skin is clammy and his stomach’s twisted up and he’s still half-hard in his jeans. That was so dumb. He could have lost everything from just one photograph; tomorrow morning he’d be waking up to angry calls from his parents and his agent and his GM. His teammates wouldn’t look at him the same anymore. People would demand he be taken off the team; maybe it would even happen.

Jonny would find out.

He goes home and jerks off, trying to picture the guy in the club, but his mind keeps wandering back to Jonny’s lips on Audrey’s. He ends up losing his hard-on and turning over to sleep, cold and anxious and alone.

***

Patrick doesn’t end up outed on the internet. He promises himself he won’t do anything so dumb ever again, and he throws himself into the game so he won’t have to think about it.

They clinch their playoff spot in early April. It’s a wild feeling, and Patrick doesn’t have room for anything else in his body the buzzer sounds. They’re all hugging each other, pouring onto the ice, and Patrick feels Jonny next to him like a brand, searing heat along his right side. “We did it!” Jonny shouts in his ear as he hugs Patrick tight.

“That’s hockey, baby!” Patrick shouts back, and all his blood fizzes up when Jonny laughs.

Playoffs are too crazy to let him think about little things like girlfriends or hookups or jealousy. Things feel like they’re where they’re supposed to be, Jonny at his center on the ice and at his side in the locker room, the two of them working seamlessly to get the team through the quarterfinals and then the semis. They’re flying high on it, playing hockey like it’s meant to be played, and when they lose to the Red Wings in the conference finals it’s a harder crash than any Patrick can remember.

The team has a cookout at Sharpy’s the day after they get knocked out. It’s the saddest fucking party Patrick’s ever attended.

“We should’ve had it,” Jonny says savagely, when he and Patrick are sacked out under a tree in Sharpy’s yard.

Patrick looks at him in surprise. “Dude,” he says. He knew Jonny was torn up about this—anyone who’s looked at Jonny’s face in the last forty-eight hours has known Jonny was torn up about this—but Jonny hasn’t been saying anything like that out loud. He’s been tired but positive to the press, talking about how they put in a good effort and it just wasn’t their year, but the future, etc.

“You know how good this team is.” Jonny’s voice is still intense, but quiet, like he doesn’t want anyone to overhear. “We should have been able to keep it together. _I_ should have been able to keep it together.”

There’s an obvious answer to that: that it wasn’t all Jonny; that hockey is a team sport; that no one person can make or break a victory. Patrick knows that answer by heart, and he knows Jonny knows that answer by heart. But he suddenly doesn’t have patience for that anymore, and he knows Jonny doesn’t, either. The two of them are supposed to bring hockey back to Chicago. “Next year,” he says, firmly, “you and I are gonna _make_ it happen.”

There’s fire in Jonny’s eyes. “ _Yeah_ we are.”

It feels a little better, having that drive fueling him instead of the bleakness of everything being over. They _will_ have it next year. Jonny’s determined to make it happen, and that, more than anything, makes Patrick believe.

Sharpy kicks them all out around nine, and Patrick dawdles on the way to his car. “You want to come over?” he says impulsively to Jonny, and Jonny cocks his head and then says, “Yeah, sure.”

Patrick drives them back to his place, even though it would make more sense not to leave Jonny’s car at Sharpy’s. “You going home soon?” Patrick asks. “Or are you going to stick around and hang out with Audrey?”

Jonny takes a while to answer, long enough that Patrick’s gut does three full rotations of doubt. They’re engaged—they’re already married—he noticed something weird in Patrick’s voice and is going to call him on it—nothing’s weird, and they’re just tired from the day and Patrick should chill out.

When Jonny does speak, it’s none of the above. “Actually,” Jonny says, “I broke up with her.”

“What?” Patrick says, a little too loudly, and then, at a more reasonable volume, “What?”

Jonny shrugs. “I mean, we were never that serious.”

“But she—” Patrick cuts himself off, because it’s probably not the smartest idea to admit that he can’t imagine Jonny kissing someone he wasn’t serious about.

“She was nice and all,” Jonny says. “But it wasn’t really…”

He sounds frustrated with himself. Patrick kind of wants to tell Jonny that he doesn’t have to try to date people just because his family wants him to find a nice Mormon girl to settle down with—that he can do things on his own timeline, based on his own priorities. But Patrick obviously has _his_ own priorities in saying that, and maybe this isn’t about Jonny’s family at all. Maybe this is what Jonny wants, too.

“When did you guys break up?” Patrick asks.

“Just before playoffs,” Jonny says.

“What the fuck, really?” Patrick says. That was like…that was a month and a half ago. That was so many life-changing games ago. He wants to yell at Jonny for not telling him, but he feels like that would be a really bad idea.

“Yeah, I didn’t want the distraction,” Jonny says. “Hockey first, you know?”

“Definitely,” Patrick says, and swallows back all the other things he might say.

It’s weird how different it feels when they go up to Patrick’s condo. It’s not like Jonny’s lack of a relationship actually opens up any possibilities that weren’t open before. But Patrick somehow feels like it has: the space between Jonny’s body and his feels more significant now, more charged with potential. He can practically feel the way Jonny takes in a breath, the way his hands twitch at his sides when they’re standing in the elevator. Nothing significant, but Patrick’s body is tallying it, trying to make it add up. Patrick’s body is such an idiot.

Patrick finds a nature documentary to put on, and Jonny makes a face when the camera starts panning over glaciers. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, why not?” Patrick says defensively. He knows Jonny watches this shit. He subjects Patrick to it all the time.

“It’s just, you hate this stuff,” Jonny says.

Patrick…only sort of does. It’s more like he likes to give Jonny shit about it. But it’s been a draining day on the tail end of six draining weeks, and sometimes he doesn’t actually want to bicker with Jonny. He just wants to sit next to him and listen to someone drone on about glacial rock formations. “I think I’ll live,” he says.

“Don’t strain yourself,” Jonny says, dry, and sits down not quite exactly at the end of the couch. Something leaps in Patrick’s belly.

It turns out the glacial rock formations are even more boring than Patrick thought. He blinks through maybe twenty minutes of the narrator’s British accent, and the next time he opens his eyes his head is resting on Jonny’s shoulder. “What timezit?” he asks, groggy.

“Only eleven,” Jonny says in a quiet voice. “Sh.”

His arm is around Patrick’s shoulders. Patrick sucks in a hot breath. Jonny’s arm on him is making his chest inflate, like he’d float away if it weren’t for the sleepy heaviness in his head, tilted onto Jonny’s shoulder. If it weren’t for Jonny’s fingers on his arm, solid, anchoring.

They don’t usually sit like this. It makes Patrick’s brain scramble for meanings that probably aren’t there. Jonny must have pulled Patrick into his side when he fell asleep, or maybe Patrick slumped over, and Jonny arranged him like this. Maybe he was being nice, or maybe he’s tired and just wants the human touch, or maybe he wants Patrick’s touch, specifically, like Patrick wants his. Probably not—but maybe. It’s not impossible.

Patrick doesn’t want to fall asleep again and miss this. But if he’s too awake he might ruin it. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, inhaling the scent of cotton and Jonny, and lets himself drift back into sleep.

The next time he wakes up, Jonny’s standing, gently manhandling Patrick to get him up, too. “Come on, you can’t sleep here,” Jonny whispers, and his hands are still on Patrick as he leads him down the hall. Patrick could wake up, maybe, but he hardly wants to: not while Jonny’s touching him like this. He’s half afraid it’ll turn out to be a dream.

Jonny makes Patrick take off his jeans and gets him under the covers. Patrick wants to do—something: invite him to stay; pull him down; curl up with Jonny and never let him go. But he doesn’t think he’s allowed to. His stomach lights up with fear when he even thinks about it.

“See you tomorrow,” he whispers instead, trying not to press too obviously into Jonny’s retreating touch, and Jonny laughs and brushes a hand against his forehead before he’s gone.

***

Patrick doesn’t see him the next day. By the time he wakes up, he has a text from Jonny saying that he’s on his way to the airport. Patrick thinks about calling but doesn’t know what he’d say. Don’t go home for the summer? _Stay with me, and we’ll_ —

Yeah. There’s no way to end that sentence. Patrick responds to the text and then goes to the airport to fly to Buffalo alone.

He and Jonny text a lot that summer. Dumb stuff, mostly: the workouts he’s doing, the condo he’s thinking of buying, family excursions to the lake. Patrick leaps at his phone when it beeps; it almost doesn’t matter what the text says, as long as it’s from Jonny.

Sometimes it’s not even dumb stuff—sometimes they’ll be texting about their families, and Jonny will say something like, _i really miss them during the season,_ something he probably isn’t admitting to anyone else. Then they’ll start talking about how hard it is to have so much of their lives they can’t share with their families, how hard it is to miss things even when it’s for the sport they love. Or they’ll start talking about the future, what they want after hockey, and it’s not _their_ future, collective, but Patrick secretly tries to find the ways their paths might overlap. In the meantime, he has Jonny’s words, honest and bare on the screen of his phone.

When they have conversations like that, it almost feels like they’re in the same space instead of hundreds of miles apart. It makes Patrick want to reach out and touch Jonny so much he gets dizzy.

He hasn’t been in touch with Jake, the guy from last summer. The first time he sees his friend Kyle, he tries to find out unobtrusively if Jake will be coming back this year, but Kyle doesn’t know. Patrick’s not sure what he wants to answer to be, anyway. It seems for a while like the answer is no, and Patrick’s okay with that—but then Jake does show up, in the middle of July, and he looks at Patrick with his dark eyes and Patrick hasn’t had sex in a year and it turns out he’s fine with the answer being yes, too.

Patrick gets fucked just the way he likes it, in Jake’s room, Jake bending him over and pushing in and hitting the right spot to make Patrick’s body dissolve. Afterward Patrick lies there and feels the shivers skirt around the edges of the tight cold place in his gut.

He tells Jake the next day that they can’t keep doing it. “Okay,” Jake says, biting his lip. “I hope I didn’t…”

“No, believe me, it’s me,” Patrick says, with enough ruefulness that Jake raises his eyebrows and doesn’t ask any more questions.

Patrick sees Jonny at the convention a couple weeks later. Just seeing him walk in is enough to heal half a dozen aching places in Patrick’s body and make him hurt in half a dozen more. Jonny’s fresh from his family’s lake cabin and is sporting a ridiculous golden-brown tan, and he smiles wide at Patrick and doesn’t mention any girls he’s seeing, and Patrick stays by his side all day and then goes back to his condo and screams into a pillow.

“What’s up with you?” Erica asks when he gets back from convention, probably because he’s walking around the house like someone who just sustained a major flesh wound.

Patrick looks at her for about three seconds, and then he says, “Can you keep a secret?”

Erica goes silent after he tells her. “Sorry,” she says, after a minute in which Patrick basically wanted to vomit with nerves. “It’s obviously fine with me, I don’t mind or anything, it’s just…I’m not sure you should tell Mom and Dad.”

His stomach does something complicated. “I wasn’t going to—why don’t you think I should tell them?”

She shakes her head. “I’m just…not sure they’d understand.”

They probably wouldn’t. Hell, _Patrick_ doesn’t even understand. He has no idea why this is true of him: why he can’t look at a pretty girl and feel what he’s supposed to; why it’s Jonny’s arms he wants to look at, Jonny’s mouth, that bare stretch of skin behind Jonny’s ear where his neck meets his shoulder. Maybe if he could understand, he’d be able to deal with it better.

“You’re right,” he says. “I won’t tell them.”

She looks at him with concerned eyes. “I don’t want to make you feel bad about it,” she says. “I just—”

“No, it’s fine,” he says. He’s never expected anyone to be okay with this.


	4. Chapter 4

Patrick takes Erica’s advice and doesn’t tell his parents he’s gay. He goes back to Chicago instead, and Jonny wraps him up in a hello hug, and Patrick wants to scream at him for being everything he wants and nothing he can have.

“Good summer?” Jonny asks, as if they haven’t been texting constantly.

“Yeah, I got a girlfriend,” Patrick says, and if Jonny looks surprised to hear him say that, it’s nothing compared to how surprised Patrick feels at having said it.

After that Jonny asks a _lot_ of questions, while Patrick internally flails and yells at himself for telling stupid lies that won’t hold up to, like, two seconds’ scrutiny. “Why didn’t you tell me about her?” Jonny asks for maybe the fifth time, and Patrick’s gonna need to answer.

“I just didn’t know if it was gonna be serious,” Patrick says. “I would ask you if you tell me about all your hookups, but…”

It might be a little mean. It doesn’t even succeed at changing the subject: Jonny just frowns at him. “I would tell you if I got a girlfriend, though.”

That’s…actually weirdly comforting to hear. Patrick’s maybe been a little worried Jonny will show up engaged one day. “I would have told you, except we broke up just before I came back,” Patrick says, and then Jonny’s making sympathetic noises and Patrick can relax and stop worrying about having to pull a nonexistent girlfriend out of upstate New York.

He thinks about it after, though—not about how dumb he was to say that; he’s pretty much gotten used to being dumb around Jonny. But about the girlfriend thing. It would definitely be smart to get one. He does talk to girls in bars, and occasionally he’ll even leave with one, though he can’t do that too often if he doesn’t want rumors spreading about his catch-and-release methods. But it’s probably going to look weird if he goes for _too_ long without ever dating anyone.

He’s also maybe thinking a little bit about Jonny last spring, with Audrey, and—it wouldn’t actually be revenge. Jonny would have to care about Patrick having a girlfriend in order for it to be revenge. But sometimes that kiss he witnessed still rears up and catches Patrick unawares, and maybe that’s a bad reason, but also, fuck it. He can get a girlfriend if he wants to.

“Hey, Sharpy,” he says one day after camp, when Sharpy looks particularly worn out and maybe off his guard. “Did you say Abby has friends she wants to set me up with?”

Patrick was wrong if he thought any level of exhaustion was enough to keep Sharpy from lighting up at an opening like that. “Peeksy!” he says, grin stretching over his whole face. “Are you finally letting us bring some joy into your empty life?”

“You could do that by getting out of it,” Patrick shoots back, which does absolutely nothing to dent Sharpy’s glee.

“We’ll have you over this weekend,” Sharpy says, ruffling his hair. “I can’t promise they all won’t go running as soon as they see you…but that’s how we weed out the ones with good judgment.”

Patrick shoves him away. He doesn’t look over at Jonny, standing by his locker; Jonny probably isn’t paying attention, anyway. Why would he be?

***

Emily is great. That’s what Patrick repeats to himself as he drives home after the dinner at Sharpy’s: Emily is great. She’s smart, and fun, and tall but not taller than Patrick, and she’s exactly the kind of girl he should date. It’s perfect.

He takes her out the next week, to a dinner place Seabs recommended in the full locker room discussion where they all gave way too much unsolicited advice while Patrick attempted to hide behind his pads. They sit down, and he asks Emily the questions Bicks told him to ask, about her childhood and her family and what she wants out of life, and she has a lot to say. Then she asks him questions, and…it goes less well.

“The best thing about hockey is, I mean, playing it, obviously,” he says, while _JONNY JONNY JONNY_ blares on repeat in his head. “But also the team. Like, it’s great, getting to spend so much time with this team of guys that all care about the same thing you do, you know?”

“It seems like it keeps you pretty busy,” she says.

“Yeah, I don’t have much time to date or anything,” he says, and then his eyes go round as he realizes what he’s just said.

Fortunately, she laughs. “I kind of get the sense you don’t do this a lot,” she says.

Patrick is usually not the worst with words. He’s had media training. But he finds himself suddenly without any response to that. He doesn’t do this a lot, because when he does this, it has to be with people he’s not into; he has to lie every moment, with his words, with his face, with his body; he has to pretend to want a life that doesn’t make any sense to him when what he actually wants is so far off the table he can’t even come up with a hypothetical way to make it possible.

“I’m sort of into someone,” he says, and then he feels this awful pressure behind his eyes that probably means they’re shining wet in the light.

Her whole face changes. “I’m so sorry,” she says, putting her hand out to lay across Patrick’s on the table. If she had done that two minutes ago, he might have freaked out, but at the moment it means something totally different. “Is she not…”

Patrick bites down hard on his lip, because he’s not going to start crying in the middle of the restaurant. “It’s just…it’s kind of impossible?” he says. “It’s, um…there are some religious problems, and…it’s not gonna work.”

“Oh no.” She has this look like she wants to find a way to make everything better, which is sweet, he guesses, and all of a sudden he can’t stand keeping it inside. “Are you sure it’s impossible? I mean, maybe she’s more flexible than you think she is, or…”

“It’s not a she,” he says quietly, and her eyes go wide.

“Oh,” she says, and she bites her lip but doesn’t draw her hand back.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” he says desperately. The weight of her hand over his feels frozen, like she doesn’t want to pull it back but doesn’t know what to do with it. “I just…obviously it could be really bad for me, and I just can’t—”

Fuck. He _is_ going to cry in the middle of the restaurant.

“Of course not,” she says, and maybe he’s being stupid but it sounds like she means it. “That must be so—I can’t even imagine.”

“It’s…not great,” he says, with a watery laugh.

“No. Shit,” she says, and he hopes he was right about her. If she decides to tell anyone—

“Not even Sharpy and Abby,” he says.

“No. Pat. I get it,” she says. “The world is shitty to gay people. I mean, it’s shitty to a lot of people, and it sucks, but I would never—I would never.”

She does mean it. Patrick’s eyes are prickling.

“Let’s beat it down together,” she says. “Okay?”

This girl is maybe a little crazy. Patrick will take it. “Yeah, okay,” he says.

***

Emily agrees to show up to a few public events with him. “Not an ongoing thing,” she says. “That seems like it would suck for both of us. But hey, let’s make it a little harder for the homophobes to get to you.”

Patrick gets to introduce her to Jonny at this charity gala thing. Emily’s wearing a killer dark-blue dress cut halfway down her chest, and obviously Jonny doesn’t look, because he’s a good Mormon boy, but his eyes do go a little wide, and Patrick is fiercely glad.

“That’s Abby’s friend?” Jonny asks him later that night when Emily’s talking to some of the other WAGs.

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “Your date’s from church?” 

“Kate. Yeah,” Jonny says, still looking after Emily.

Patrick’s not sure what to say after that: he doesn’t want to talk about Jonny’s date, and he sure as heck doesn’t want to talk about Emily. He doesn’t know what he’d even say, except _she’s an awesome person who found out I was gay and hasn’t told anyone yet._

Patrick’s fairly sure she won’t. But like this, with Emily and Jonny in the same room, it feels like his secret is bare inches away from being exposed: like all Jonny would have to do is look at things from just the right angle, and it would all be revealed.

He just has to remember to be who he’s supposed to be. He’s a famous athlete attending an event with a beautiful woman on his arm, just like Jonny, just like everyone else on the team. All Patrick has to do is smile and act like a normal guy, and everything will be fine.

***

“I don’t like her,” Jonny says the next morning, when he shows up at Patrick’s condo uninvited.

“Excuse me?” Patrick says, raising his eyebrows.

“Emily,” Jonny says, as if that were in any way unclear. His face is a storm cloud. “I don’t like her.”

“Dude, how do you know she’s not here?” Patrick asks, and the color drains from Jonny’s face.

“Is she—” Jonny asks, trying to peer around Patrick.

“No, she’s not, you dick, but she could have been,” Patrick says, stepping back to let Jonny into the apartment. She could have been, if she’d actually slept over and not gone back to her own apartment after a friendly hug at her door. “And what the fuck do you mean, you don’t like her?”

“She seemed untrustworthy,” Jonny says, because apparently it’s okay to insult Patrick’s date if he’s not actually doing it to her face.

“What does that even mean?” Patrick says. Then: “Wait, nope, sorry, it obviously doesn’t mean anything. You are so full of shit, man.”

“I am not,” Jonny says, eyes flashing. “I don’t trust her.”

“Well, you don’t have to trust her. I do.”

“You’re too close to see it properly,” Jonny says.

Patrick laughs bitterly. “Seriously? I didn’t see you asking for outside opinions when you were dating Audrey.”

“I didn’t need outside opinions when I was dating Audrey,” Jonny says.

“Or Kate, what about Kate?” Patrick says. “I don’t know, did she seem trustworthy to you? Because she seemed a little shifty to me.”

Jonny makes a confused face. “Why are you talking about Kate?”

“Why are we talking about Emily?” Patrick bursts out.

“I just think—”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Patrick says, and goes into the kitchen.

It takes a minute for Jonny to follow him: long enough for Patrick to pour himself a cup of coffee and a teaspoon of the cream Jonny likes to glare at him about. He thought it would be satisfying to have Jonny care about who he’s dating, but actually it feels like digging in deeper on an old wound: like Jonny won’t let him have the thing he really wants, and now he won’t even let him have this thing he’s trying to settle for. Patrick takes a sip of coffee and breathes in deep through his nose.

When Jonny does come in, he seems more subdued. “I just want to make sure the person you’re dating is okay,” he says.

“She’s Sharpy and Abby’s friend,” Patrick says.

Jonny wrinkles his nose at that. He loves Abby—everyone loves Abby—but he doesn’t trust Sharpy, because no one with sense trusts Sharpy, so Patrick can see how he’d be suspicious. “I just…”

He’s standing pretty close to Patrick, fiddling with Patrick’s dish towel. He looks tired: like maybe he didn’t follow his own advice and get to bed at a regular hour last night. There are dark circles under his eyes that Patrick wants to smooth his fingers over.

“You don’t get to choose who I date,” Patrick says quietly. “If you think she’s actually stealing all my money and selling my identity to Siberia, okay, sure, but it’s not okay to come in here and say you don’t like her face or whatever.”

Jonny nods, chagrined, but the corner of his mouth is twitching up. “Siberia?”

“Shut up,” Patrick says, hiding behind his coffee cup so Jonny won’t see him start to grin. “You haven’t even said sorry yet.”

“Fine. Sorry,” Jonny says, but he’s looking at Patrick all soft-eyed. The morning light is shining in through the kitchen window, and Jonny’s eyes are crinkled at the corners, and Patrick has to look away.

He wonders if Jonny has plans for the day. Maybe he won’t have to leave, and they can just stay like this: hanging out on a lazy Saturday morning, as if Jonny lived here, as if this were their life. Maybe Patrick can pretend for a little while.

“You know, I’ve always loved the smell of coffee,” Jonny says.

He’s looking at the cup in Patrick’s hands. “I can get you some if you—oh. Right.” Patrick’s always forgetting about the caffeine rule. It makes even less sense than the alcohol one, and that’s saying something.

“Believe me, it’s the first thing I’d drink if the rules changed,” Jonny says wryly.

“Well,” Patrick says, “you can smell it,” and he holds the cup out.

He doesn’t quite think it through. Or maybe he was thinking Jonny would take the cup—but he doesn’t, just puts his hands on the cup over Patrick’s and raises it to his nose. His eyes shut and he breathes in and sucks all the oxygen out of the room.

Patrick’s blood is pounding wildly at the surface of his skin. He feels like everything in the room just changed—like this feeling within him should exist in the air, like Jonny should be breathing it in.

Jonny opens his eyes and looks at him. Patrick looks back, wide-eyed, caught. For a moment they lock eyes, and Patrick feels like something’s about to tip over—like Jonny’s gonna—

Jonny looks away, takes his hands off the cup and off Patrick’s.

“Probably shouldn’t let myself be tempted,” he says, lightly enough that that might be all he’s talking about. Probably.

This isn’t the first time Patrick’s thought about telling him. He’s thought about it a lot: every time this feeling in his chest gets so big it seems like his ribs are going to crack from trying to hold it in. Every time it feels like he can’t possibly go through however many more years of this, alone with this feeling, pretending everything’s fine. That’s when he thinks maybe he should just say it. Maybe, even if Jonny doesn’t feel the same way, it would make it easier to have him know. But then he imagines what Jonny’s face would look like, the shift in his eyes as he saw what Patrick really was. The pity, and the walls that would go up. 

The problem is, there’s no way it could work. It’s not completely impossible that Jonny’s into guys—it’s certainly not something he’d advertise if he were, given his religion. And if he’s into guys, he might be into Patrick. But even if by some tiny chance that turned out to be true, Jonny would never be okay with acting on it. Patrick _knows_ this. Even leaving aside his family and his church community and the public censure—Jonny really believes. And Jonny wouldn’t be Jonny if he were capable of acting against his beliefs like that. Even if he wanted to say yes, he wouldn’t.

So Patrick takes in a shaky breath and moves away. He takes a gulp of coffee to keep his mouth from feeling anything else, and he changes the subject.

***

It’s really good, is the thing. Him and Jonny: it’s _so_ good, whenever Patrick manages to put aside this thing where he wants more and just enjoys his company. Sometimes there are stretches of weeks at a time where it’s nothing but good, the two of them clicking on the ice and poring obsessively over game tape in hotel rooms and crashing at each other’s places—weeks where they barely even have to think about what to say to each other because it feels like they’re a single conversation that never starts or stops. Then Jonny will say something, something unexpectedly stubborn or open-hearted or grumpy or funny or just _him_ , and Patrick’s whole body clenches up in a throb of desire.

He just wants to put his mouth on Jonny’s. That doesn’t seem like so much to ask: they’re together so much, sharing almost everything, and it doesn’t seem like it should be such a stretch to reach across that last inch of separation and finally breathe the same air. Then he thinks about how crossing that last inch would mean everything to him, and yeah, okay, he can admit that it would be a big deal. But sometimes holding back is so hard he feels like he’s going to choke.

Emily comes with him to the Hawks’ holiday party that December. Patrick tries to avoid Jonny when Emily’s with him—he probably would anyway, even if Jonny hadn’t said he disliked her. Patrick hasn’t actually told Emily who it is that he’s in love with, and letting her see him with Jonny would feel too much like shouting out everything he’s ever wanted.

He does find Jonny later that night, when Emily’s getting snacks and the tiny sweet-faced brunette Jonny brought to the party isn’t around, either. Patrick’s not even trying to find Jonny, really: he’s just so aware of him anytime they’re in a room together that it takes more work to stay away from him than to drift near.

“Nothing to say about Emily?” Patrick asks, because he is apparently addicted to trouble.

“Nope,” Jonny says firmly. “You guys seem good together.”

It makes him look vaguely constipated to say it, him and his stupid theory about trustworthy faces, and Patrick has to laugh a little. “We’re not really together,” he says—even though he probably shouldn’t. It would be better if Jonny thought they _were_ together. But the way Jonny’s face relaxes feels worth it. “She’s just, you know, a friend.”

Jonny nods, teeth sunk in his lower lip in a way Patrick’s better at not looking at when he hasn’t had three glasses of punch. “It’s really hard to date in the NHL,” he says.

It’s one of his ridiculous declarative statements that sound like he’s codifying the idea for posterity. “You seem to do okay,” Patrick says before he can think better of it.

This bleak look crosses Jonny’s face, so fast Patrick thinks he might have been imagining it. “It’s just hard,” Jonny says, “when the other person can’t really share your life, you know?”

Patrick knows. There’s this wild surge inside of him, wanting to burst out through his ribs, a surge of: _I’m right here, I’m already sharing your life, I could share so much more—_

Except that it’s not what Jonny wants. “Maybe you could, um, find an athlete?” he says. “Like, then she’d understand what you do, and you could talk about all your nutrition stuff with her.”

He doesn’t know why he’s helping. Maybe just for the way a smile tugs at Jonny’s lips. “I thought you said no one alive wanted to hear that much about kale smoothies.”

“Well, they don’t,” Patrick says automatically. “But, you know, maybe you could come close.”

Jonny gives him an amused-but-skeptical look. Patrick wants to kiss him so bad. Wants to pull him into the shadow in the corner, lay hands on him, get his mouth to open under Patrick’s—

“Hey,” Emily says at his elbow. “Want some of this weird cheese log?”

Patrick’s not sure what’s on his face when he looks over, startled. He’s pretty sure, based on the way she’s looking at him, that it’s kind of a lot. But she doesn’t say anything.

“That looks horrible,” he says, staring at the mess of orange cheese and hearing his heartbeat thunder in his ears.

“Oh, it is, but what can you do?” she says, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Jonny walk away.

***

“So,” she says later, when they’re alone. “Jonathan Toews.”

Patrick groans and puts his face in his hands.

“I’ve gotta say, you said it was bad, but I had no idea,” she says.

“It’s…about as bad as you think it is,” he says, which is as much as he can say without falling apart all over in the front seat of his car.

“And he’s really serious about the Mormon thing?” she asks.

“Yup,” he says. He’s never told anyone about this thing with Jonny, and coming even this close to saying it makes him feel like he’s opening his chest for her to play with the insides. “Thinks it’s all true and everything.”

“Shit,” she says. “Want me to set you up with a guy from work, take your mind off it?”

“No, I think I…” he starts to say, and then his throat is closing up and he can’t go on.

She doesn’t say anything. But she does put her hand on his shoulder, heavy and comforting, until he can get it together enough to drive them home.

***

It changes things, having even one person who knows about his thing for Jonny. Patrick feels like the borders of himself are thinner, like the words might slip out with no warning. It’s especially hard when he’s home the next week for Christmas—all forty-eight hours of it—and his sisters and parents are all talking happily about their lives and there’s this awful weight in Patrick’s gut that he can’t let out.

He remembers what Erica said, and he’s not planning to say anything. She doesn’t bring it up with him, and he’s grateful; it’s easier if they both pretend it’s forgotten. But then the night before his flight back he’s lying on the couch next to his mom, and his mom is reading and stroking his hair, and all of a sudden he feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest.

“Mom?” he says.

“Yeah, baby?” she says.

There’s this awful silence after he says it. Patrick is frozen on the couch, not breathing in or out, not looking at his mom’s face, and when she finally speaks again she’s crying. “Patrick,” she says finally. “How could you do this to yourself?”

He doesn’t know what to say. He feels like he’s frozen in the corner of the couch. Then his dad comes in, and his mom makes him say it again, and—

He didn’t know anything could be worse than his mother crying, but then he sees the shift in his dad’s face, the way something breaks.

“Son,” he says, “you want to think long and hard before you do this to your career.”

“It’s not—I’m not doing it to my—” Patrick isn’t making much sound. He can’t quite get enough air.

His mom is crying harder now. His dad goes around behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders. “Your mother and I only want what’s best for you. Is this really what’s going to make you happy?” he asks, like he knows the answer is no.

He’s not even wrong. This isn’t making Patrick happy at all. But he can’t change it any more than he can reach in and replace the beating heart in his chest. If he could—if he could change the way every atom of his body turns toward Jonny—

He wouldn’t. He should want to, but he can’t. Jonny is too good to be loved any less than this, even if it makes Patrick want to gut himself at his feet.

It feels like that’s what he’s doing now, with his parents’ eyes on him.

“You’re right,” he says, though the words choke him on the way out. “I’ll…try to—”

He can’t think of anything to promise, and if he sits here any longer he’s going to be crying, too, so he gets up and leaves the room.

***

He has it together again by the time he gets to Chicago the next day. It was…sort of the shittiest night imaginable, but it’s a new day now and no one can even see the redness of his eyes behind his baseball cap and sunglasses. He’s even feeling okay when he gets to his condo—not great, but there’s this new sort of numbness that he can definitely live with. He always knew his parents would react the way they did. It sucked a lot last night, but he has practice in a few hours, and he just has to go back to his normal life. He can handle this.

He’s not expecting it when the doorbell rings, and he opens it without thinking and finds Jonny on the other side.

“Hey, I was wondering if you—” Jonny says, and then he stops. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Patrick says. He’s not even lying. He’s feeling okay now. He’s not sure what Jonny’s reacting to.

“No, you look all,” Jonny says, coming forward and touching his shoulder, and Patrick bursts into tears.

It’s horrible and humiliating and totally not what Patrick planned on doing, and then Jonny’s arms come up around him and—

It doesn’t help with the crying. If anything it harder to stop. But Jonny’s holding him up, tucking Patrick’s face into his shoulder, and Patrick didn’t know how much he wanted this. It feels totally different from the crying he did alone in his room last night, curled up in a ball under the covers. It feels safe. It feels almost like what he wants.

Jonny strokes a hand over Patrick’s hair. “Are you—what happened?”

Patrick shakes his head against Jonny’s shoulder. “Just had a fight with my family. It’s not a big deal.” Except that he can’t quite get himself to stop crying, so it obviously is a big deal

Jonny’s arms tighten around him. It does a tiny bit to fill up the empty space that Patrick hasn’t been able to get rid of since last night. “Is there anything I can do?” he asks fiercely, like he’ll go out and beat up Patrick’s dad if Patrick asks him to.

“Just…” _Keep holding me like this. Never stop._ “Can we sit on the couch or something?”

It’s embarrassing, pulling his face away from Jonny’s shoulder long enough to move over to the couch. Patrick knows he looks like a tomato when he cries. But Jonny just has this really concerned look on his face, and as soon as they’re on the couch he tucks Patrick against his side and commandeers the remote to find an old hockey game Patrick has saved. Patrick sags against him and feels absurdly grateful.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jonny asks after a while, when Patrick’s breathing has evened out and they’re watching the Kings try to score on the Sharks.

“Not really,” Patrick says. He maybe would, except that telling Jonny would be even worse than telling his family. Telling Jonny would lose him the only thing that’s keeping him from openly weeping right now. “It was kind of dumb.”

“Families are tough,” Jonny says. His arm is around Patrick, his fingers playing with Patrick’s shirt sleeve. “Mine is—yeah.”

“Are you having problems with yours?” Patrick asks. He feels drained from the crying, wrung out in a way that’s almost peaceful.

Jonny hums. “Not really. Just—there was some stuff I was struggling with, over the break, and they didn’t really want to hear about it.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s not a big deal. Just, you know, the marriage thing again,” Jonny says, and Patrick’s stomach gives a little jerk downward. Then Jonny leans his head against the top of Patrick’s and says, “They don’t seem to get that I like my life the way it is right now.”

Warmth spreads all through Patrick’s chest, driving away the empty feeling that came from crying. He knew Jonny wasn’t as intent on getting married as his family wanted him to be, but he didn’t know he was so happy with how things were. He smiles against Jonny’s shirt. “Yeah, our lives are pretty great.”

“When your family isn’t being jerks,” Jonny says, and there’s that tone like he’s going to go beat someone up again.

“How do you know I wasn’t being the jerk?” Patrick asks.

“Yeah, that does sound pretty plausible,” Jonny says, and he laughs when Patrick pretends to bite him for it. “But I also know you love them a lot. You guys will work it out.”

Patrick wishes he could be so sure. He thinks maybe he broke something: the image of who he is in his parents’ eyes, maybe. Even if they get more okay with the gay thing, it’ll never be the way it used to be. It feels like something’s ruptured in his lower belly every time he thinks about it.

One thing is clear: he can’t wish this on Jonny. No matter how much he’d love for Jonny to feel the same way he does, he can’t actually want that, not for Jonny. Because that would mean Jonny having to have that conversation with his family—his family who would react even worse than Patrick’s did. Patrick can’t wish that on anybody.


	5. Chapter 5

The Olympics are a good distraction. They feel a lot closer this side of Christmas, and suddenly they’re all anybody can talk about. They’re a safe thing for Patrick to bring up with his parents, when he gets up the nerve to call home. And of course the locker room is going crazy for them.

There are a bunch of players on the Hawks going to the Olympics, but Patrick’s the only one from the U.S.—which means he’s the one who gets all the crap. “How come you guys aren’t torturing Hoss?” he complains when he comes in to find Canadian flags all over his stall again. 

“I don’t know, maybe we’re not going to crush his team as comprehensively as we’re going to crush yours,” Sharpy says, leering, as Patrick digs out the Canadian boxer shorts they’ve replaced all his underwear with.

“Guess I’ll be freeballing it today,” he says, crumpling up the boxers and throwing them at Sharpy. Sharpy deflects and they land on Jonny, who goes all red and sputtering. Which almost makes the whole thing worth it.

Jonny gets a lot of press attention leading up to the Olympics. All the Olympians on the team do—especially Patrick, as the only American, with all the American reporters around him—but Jonny gets a different kind of question, the kind that Patrick can’t remember him getting since their rookie year.

“No, it’s not really a tough call for me,” he hears Jonny saying at one point when the press has released everyone else. There’s a little bit of stress on the “not,” which for Jonny means he’s basically screaming with frustration. “It was a complicated decision when I started playing in the NHL, but it’s one I made, and I see this as an extension of it. I’m happy to be doing this for my country.”

“What was that about?” Patrick asks when Jonny’s finally free.

Jonny makes a face like he’s tasting something sour. “Apparently someone’s seen _Chariots of Fire_.”

Patrick frowns. “The one with running on the beach?”

“The one with the Christian kid who won’t run on Sundays,” Jonny says, rolling his eyes. “And some of the Olympic games are on Sunday, so naturally, they keep asking me…”

“Seriously?” Patrick says. “But you’ve been doing this for years.”

“But it’s the Olympics, so I guess everyone’s looking for a story,” Jonny says.

It sort of makes sense. Patrick can’t even count the number of times they’ve asked him how he feels about playing against his Chicago teammates. You’d think they’d get bored of it when he never has a new answer.

“I just wish…I don’t know,” Jonny says. “I wish they wouldn’t treat my faith like it makes me a freak.”

Patrick wants to tell him he knows the feeling, that a lot of the time he feels like a freak, too. But he doesn’t want to tell him why—doesn’t want to explain that his freakishness is so well-hidden that even Jonny doesn’t know about it. “Yeah, I know, you’d think they’d at least recognize all the _other_ things that make you a freak,” he says instead, and Jonny cuffs him around the head. But at least he isn’t looking so pinched and haunted anymore.

***

No matter what Patrick’s been telling reporters, it’s weird playing against his teammates.

It’s not playing against them that’s the weirdest part, actually. It’s being at the Olympics with his teammates there, in the same Village, but not on his team. Patrick loves America—obviously—and he’s super proud to represent it at the Games, but the people on the national team aren’t _his_ people the way the Hawks are. He keeps turning around in the locker room, expecting to see Sharpy’s delighted face as soon as someone leaves themselves open for a joke, or Duncs and Seabs doing their weird pre-game D-man bonding, and it’s so jarring when they’re not there. He feels Jonny’s absence like a missing limb.

Patrick’s used to spending months without Jonny. He does it every summer. But he’s not used to being without Jonny when Jonny’s right there, only a building or two away, doing the same kind of things Patrick’s doing but not actually with him. It’s a constant pang in Patrick’s gut, an emptiness he can’t make go away.

He just wants Jonny there all the time: for the hockey, for the downtime, for the Olympic touristy stuff, going to watch the snowboarding or speed skating or whatever. He wants to hear Jonny judgily critique the skiing and pretend to know what he’s talking about with the figure skating and, dear Lord, even wax rhapsodic about curling. That’s how far gone Patrick is: he’s thinking longingly about _curling._

But Jonny isn’t his date to the Olympics; he isn’t even his teammate. And it’s only two weeks. Patrick has other shit to focus on, like beating Canada and bringing glory to the United States of America.

His family isn’t making it any easier to focus. They’ve all come up to watch him play, which is supportive and great, but it’s the first time he’s spent a lot of time with them since Christmas and his parents are avoiding eye contact and talking weirdly around things. His dad has started using every opportunity to point out how much press coverage Patrick gets and how the American people are looking for a particular kind of image from their sports stars, and there’s only so much Patrick can smile and nod.

“You’ve got to make up with Mom and Dad,” Jess says a few days in, when his sisters are dropping him off at the American dorm. “I don’t know what you did, but they’re being super weird about it.”

“I didn’t—I mean. I didn’t do anything that I can make up with them over,” Patrick says. He’s carefully not looking at Erica.

“Are you sure?” Jess says. “Because they were talking in whispers all morning, and I’m pretty sure it was about you.”

“All I did was—” And what the hell. His family’s already messed up because of it. What can it hurt now? “All I did was tell them I’m gay,” he says, and just saying it makes his heart speed up like twenty beats per minute.

“You’re what?” Jackie yelps, and Patrick hushes her and looks around wildly even though there’s no one nearby. “Sorry,” she says in a lower voice. “But—really?”

“Whoa,” Jess says. “This is…whoa.”

“I didn’t know you told them.” Erica slides her arm around Patrick’s waist. “I’m so sorry.”

Patrick lets his head rest on her shoulder. It’s not as bad as—none of them are freaking out, at least. “Yeah, it hasn’t been the best,” he says.

“Wait, Erica knew?” Jackie says. “How come I didn’t know?”

“Patty,” Jess says, reaching out to him, tears in her eyes, and he’s so glad she’s not turning away or taking his parents’ side, but fuck, if she starts crying, Patrick’s going to start crying, right here in front of the American dorms, and of course that’s when Jonny finds them.

“Oh, hey, guys,” Jonny says, bounding up. “I didn’t know you were here. Is—is everything okay?”

Erica disentangles herself from Patrick’s side. “Yeah, we were just dropping him off. You having a good Olympics?”

Patrick suddenly notices that Jackie’s looking back and forth between him and Jonny, eyes wide. “Wait,” she says, loud again, before Patrick can do anything to stop her. “If you’re—are _you and Jonny_ —”

Jess smacks a hand over her mouth before she can get the rest of it out. “Sorry,” she says to Jonny. “She’s just, uh, really intense about international rivalries.”

Jonny looks confused and slightly alarmed.

“Jess,” Erica says pointedly. “Shouldn’t we go do that thing?”

“What? Oh! That thing. Yes,” Jess says, hand still over Jackie’s mouth. “Yeah, we should go do that thing. We’ll catch you guys later.”

“You guys have fun!” Erica says, and they hurry away, Jess dragging Jackie by the arm.

“That was—weird,” Jonny says, looking after them.

Patrick chokes back semi-hysterical laughter. He feels weirdly drained and stretched, like his emotions have been pulled in too many directions over the past ten minutes. “Yeah, well, they’re kind of weird.”

“Glad they have your back, though,” Jonny says, and for one terrible moment Patrick thinks Jonny _heard_ —that he _knows_ —“Can’t have you compromising the glory of the U.S. or anything.”

Jonny is smirking. Motherfucker. Patrick’s heart can’t take this much tension. “Oh, you mean, the glory we’ll be winning when we kick your asses in the final?” Patrick asks, and Jonny’s face kindles with competitive fire.

“In your dreams,” Jonny hisses, and—and it’s only been three days, but Jonny’s right in front of him, looking like that, and Patrick can practically taste what it would be like if he were allowed to put his hands on Jonny right now.

He takes a second to let the desire roll through him. “So what are you doing here, if not to steal American secrets?” Patrick asks.

“Like you have any secrets,” Jonny says. “No, I was just wondering if you wanted to go do something with me.”

“Do something.” It would be dumb to read too much into this. Patrick knows he _will_ read too much into this, but he wants the record to show that he knows that it’s dumb.

“Yeah,” Jonny says, smiling kind of shyly. “There’s this curling match I really want to see?”

“Um,” Patrick says. He knows he was just thinking that he’d even watch curling if it meant being with Jonny, but—

“It’s a really important match,” Jonny says, while Patrick’s patheticness wars with his desire not to die of boredom. “It’s Canada versus Switzerland, and they’re both favorites to medal, so this one is going to be intense. They’re all top-notch athletes, so if you’re going to catch any of the matches, this is really—” and is that a smirk tugging at his lips?

“You asshole,” Patrick says, hitting Jonny with his gloves. His red, white, and blue American gloves. “I thought you were serious.”

“Takes one to know one,” Jonny says, which is maybe the closest Patrick’s ever heard him come to swearing.

“I am never watching the Discovery Channel with you again,” Patrick says.

It’s obviously a lie. Jonny’s eyes are crinkling. “What if I change the offer to some ski jumping?”

“Fine,” Patrick says. “But you’re buying the hot chocolate.”

***

Jonny does, as predicted, criticize the technique. But later, when Patrick’s trying to fall asleep early to get up for an inhumanely scheduled practice, he can’t stop smiling into his pillow.

***

Watching Jonny happy after the gold medal hurts. There’s always something a little tough about watching Jonny when he’s really happy, because it makes Patrick want to put his hands on him so badly, and he’s always aware that the happiness isn’t for him to be a part of. But usually it isn’t at Patrick’s expense, at least. Not that this is exactly—but Jonny only won because Patrick lost. It’s hard not to think of that, when he sees the way Jonny’s lit up after the buzzer; hard not to see this as a new way Jonny can hurt him just by existing in Patrick’s vicinity as the person he is.

Fuck, but Jonny happy is beautiful.

Patrick mostly steers clear. None of the Hawks are being jerks about the gold medal game, but their sympathy is even worse than their happiness, so he’d prefer not to interact.

The next time he sees Jonny is on the flight home. Patrick’s already in his seat when he sees Jonny come down the aisle. He has a moment of hoping that Jonny won’t sit with him, and then a moment of not being sure whether he wants it or not. Then Jonny sits down next to him, and Patrick knows that’s what he wanted.

It’s awkward, though. They haven’t talked since the handshake line, when Jonny couldn’t hold back his elation. Now he looks exhausted, but in a happy way. A way where maybe he didn’t get enough sleep last night because of the celebrations. Not in the empty _could have would have should have_ way Patrick feels every time he thinks about that last game.

Neither of them says anything for a couple of minutes after Jonny sits down—they just lean their heads against the headrests, not looking at each other. Then Jonny says, “I like it better when we’re on the same side.”

Patrick gives a forced laugh.

“No, really,” Jonny says. “I just hate that every time I think about how we won, it’s at the expense of—”

“Shut up,” Patrick says. “It’s—it’s whatever. One of us would have had to do it.”

“Could have been some other country,” Jonny says.

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Like you would have been okay with that for even a second.” Then, “You don’t have to, like—you don’t have to do this.”

“I want to, though,” Jonny says quietly.

Patrick squeezes his eyes shut. It still hurts: that plunging moment when the buzzer sounded and everything was over and they didn’t win. He can’t even think about talking about it yet. “Don’t,” he says.

Jonny’s quiet next to him. Patrick knows he understands; that’s the only reason he can say that, the only reason he can sit here with his eyes closed and not worry about how Jonny’s reacting. He knows Jonny understands.

“It’ll be better,” Jonny says a minute later in a fierce undertone, “when we win together.”

Patrick opens his eyes. Jonny’s looking at him with that game-time intensity, as if, fresh off his win at the Olympics, this is actually what he cares about: the Hawks, and how they’re gonna go all the way this year. Not as a consolation prize for Patrick, not even as a way to change the subject. The intensity in Jonny’s eyes isn’t something you fake.

It’s not fair, really, how Jonny can throw him off-balance like this. Patrick has such bigger things to be depressed about right now and here’s Jonny, looking at him like this, like he can will their future into being because that’s how good they are and what is Patrick supposed to do with his _mouth_?

He swallows like three times, and then he says, because he has to say something, “Consolation prize, huh?”

“No,” Jonny says sharply, and, okay, Patrick knew that’s not what he was saying, but—Jonny puts his hand on Patrick’s forearm. “Patrick. We’re going to win the Cup, you and me and the Hawks. How could that ever be a consolation prize?”

He sounds so intense about it. And he’s right, of course. Patrick’s just… “Yeah,” he says, closing his eyes again. “Sorry. It’s just been a…”

Long night. Long couple of weeks. Long string of months, looking ahead to the Olympics, waiting, hoping.

There are soft fingers in his hair. Jonny’s moving Patrick’s head, tipping it against his shoulder, the gentleness of his touch nothing like the biting force of his words just a moment ago. The gentleness breaks Patrick open, so that a couple of tears squeeze out from under his eyelids.

It’s not a consolation prize. Hockey with Jonny could never be a consolation prize. Patrick should get better at appreciating that.

“It’s a long flight,” Jonny says, his voice a rumble where his head is tipped against Patrick’s. “You should get some rest.” And Patrick does.

***

Patrick’s looking forward to the playoffs. It’s looking pretty fucking likely that they get a spot this year, unless they go on the losing streak to end all losing streaks, and he wants what Jonny promised on that airplane: the Cup, gleaming silver and held in their hands.

It’s not just that, though. The playoffs are a chance to do what he does well and stop thinking about anything else. He remembers from last year the total focus they demanded, the way they took him out of his head and plunged him in a world that was just hockey. He could use that right about now.

It doesn’t quite go as he planned, though. The Hawks do make it to the playoffs—they win their fucking division for the first time since 1993, take _that_ —and the team’s energy ramps up like it did last year, but it feels totally different than last time.

It’s felt different ever since the Olympics, actually: playing on Jonny’s line. Patrick’s always aware of Jonny on the ice—he has to be—but it’s like there’s extra energy between them now, or maybe it’s just that Patrick is noticing it more after having been without it at the Olympics. Whatever it is, he can’t shake the sense of him and Jonny at the forefront of the team, pushing them further than they could ever have gone otherwise.

It only gets more intense as the team ramps up for playoffs. Jonny keeps coming over with game tape, and the two of them spend hours on obsessive analysis of the Preds’ play in the days before the first round. It’s so easy to fall into it, the groove that they can find together; then the end of the night hits, and Jonny leaves, and Patrick curls up around that space in his chest where it feels like something vital has been torn out of him.

“Do you pray about it?” Patrick asks him late on one of those nights, because—because apparently he likes to torture himself by asking questions about the parts of Jonny he can’t touch.

Jonny looks kind of surprised, and then thoughtful. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “I do.”

“So is God on our side?” Patrick asks. “He gonna get us the Cup?”

Jonny makes a face. “It doesn’t work that way,” he says.

“What. God’s not supporting the Blackhawks?” Patrick nudges Jonny in the thigh with his toes.

“God doesn’t have a favorite sports team,” Jonny says, rolling his eyes. “It’s more like…He gives us stuff, like the ability to play. It’s up to us what to do with that.”

“Okay,” Patrick says. That sounds more lowkey than he would have expected. “So what do you pray for, then?”

“Strength, mostly,” Jonny says, slowly. “To be the best I can be. To lead the team as far as we can go, as far as I _know_ we can go. I know He’s not gonna make us win—only we can make us win—but I pray that I won’t have anything to regret when this is over. That I’ll be able to walk away afterward and know that I’ve left it all on the ice.”

Shit. Patrick should not want to kiss him this much when he’s talking about theology.

Maybe he’s silent for too long, fighting against that impulse, because Jonny gives him a cautious glance. “Sorry if that’s—”

“No, it’s good,” Patrick says. “I don’t mind hearing you talk about this stuff.”

Jonny scrunches his nose. “It doesn’t weird you out?”

“It’s not like—I mean. It’s not like I _don’t_ believe,” Patrick says.

Now Jonny looks intrigued. “Yeah?”

“Not, like, your religion or anything,” Patrick says. “But, yeah, I think there’s probably a God. And, if there is, I hope He’s, like, I don’t know. Happy with me.”

He can feel his cheeks heating up. Jonny is looking at him with this almost unbearable focus. “God is definitely happy with you.”

Patrick bites down on his lower lip. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice almost steady. “I hear a lot of different versions of God.”

“I can’t imagine one who wouldn’t be proud of you,” Jonny says, putting a hand on Patrick’s ankle, and Patrick has to turn his face away and squeeze his eyes shut tight so that Jonny won’t see the way he’s—

Jonny’s hand stays on his ankle, a strong grip, and Patrick breathes through the choking mass at the base of his throat. He wonders what God would think, if He were actually listening right now. If this full-body ache is really how God intended Patrick to feel.

“How do you know what God wants?” he asks through the tightness in his throat. “The Sundays and the money and the alcohol. How do you really—"

“A few ways, I guess,” Jonny says. “Scriptures. Church prophets, church tradition. And personal prayer, of course. It’s a mix of all of them.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Patrick says.

“It’s not,” Jonny says, suddenly sharp. “It’s not easy at all.”

Patrick opens his eyes. “But you—”

“Even with all of that, we don’t always know,” Jonny says. “It can be messy, and confusing, and—but even if we knew it perfectly. It’s the will of God. It’s not supposed to be easy.”

“So, what, you just—you do what He wants you to, even if you’re not sure what it is?” Patrick asks.

Jonny looks at him, eyes dark. “If you knew there was something out there that was better than anything else. Something even better than hockey. Something so much better you can barely even imagine it—wouldn’t you go after it? No matter what else you had to give up?”

Patrick stares back at him, breath caught. He knows Jonny’s not talking about—he knows Jonny’s talking about religion. About God. But Jonny’s hand is on Patrick’s skin and Jonny’s eyes are on Patrick’s eyes and there is something Patrick wants more than anything else in this moment. But he can’t go after it—not without destroying the thing he’s after. He can’t even figure out a way to want it without wishing the whole universe different.

He almost wishes he could say—the words are so loud in his head. It feels like they must be screaming out of him. It seems impossible that Jonny doesn’t hear them. If he could just say—if he could just let Jonny hear it, just once—

“We should get to bed,” Jonny says, holding his eyes. “Gotta keep to a regular schedule.”

That’s right. Patrick nods and takes his leg out of Jonny’s grasp. “We’ve got some games to win,” he says.

***

They do win: that whole first series against the Preds, they win more than they lose, and the same for the round against the Canucks. Patrick’s riding high by the end of it, feeling strong, like he can keep doing this for a long time—and then they sweep the Sharks.

They _sweep the Sharks_. They’re all dazed the night after their fourth win, the whole team, giddy and disbelieving. They have five days off, and Patrick’s never felt so focused in his life. It’s all about those next games, the real thing, the last round.

It’s like every moment of every game is cut from diamond. They win two, and lose two, and win one, and then it’s the sixth game and sudden-death overtime and Patrick has the puck and—

The whole world freezes when it leaves his stick for the goal. He’s bending his knee before he quite realizes what’s happened. His fist is in the air, his heart beating too fast, and is it a goal? He thinks it’s a goal; it feels like a goal; but—

Then it all breaks open, the world unfreezing in a thundering wave, and they’ve _won._

The party lasts all night. Patrick barely has a voice left after the first two hours of it. His body is remade by the weight of the Cup in his hands, the beautiful shining Cup, lighting the whole rink. The moment when he first gets his hands on it: circling the rink screaming, and then Jonny right in front of him, his hands joining Patrick’s on the Cup, and Patrick feels so full he’s going to burst.

The whole team. They’re all so wonderful: Sharpy cheering and lifting Abby into the air; Duncs with his seventeen fucking playoff points, getting Seabs on his shoulders while they both chug champagne; Nemo, with his gorgeous hands that were there right when it counted, looking dazed and happy like he just stopped a puck with his face, beaming the whole flight home. And Jonny. Always Jonny, across the room, right next to him, glowing brighter than everyone else.

They don’t get a moment alone until it’s so late it’s practically early. They aren’t really alone; the party is still raging on around them, the bar open long after it should have closed; but they’re alone in a shadowy corner, and Patrick has Jonny’s whole attention on him, can feel it like the light of the sun. “Patrick,” Jonny says, reaching out for him. “Patrick, you were _so good._ ”

“Look who’s talking, Mr. Conn-Smythe,” Patrick says, half-hysterical, not even fighting the urge to put his hands on Jonny’s shoulders. Patrick’s hands have been on everyone tonight, but it’s better when it’s Jonny.

“No, but.” Jonny’s hands are fisted in his shirt, and Patrick’s blood is fizzing like the champagne he’s been drinking. “ _You,_ Patrick. That _goal._ ”

“You made it happen,” Patrick says, over the noise of the crowd. “You said we were gonna do it. You made it, Jonny—”

“No.” Jonny yanks him closer, so his mouth is almost at Patrick’s temple. “ _We_ did it,” he says. “Patrick—” One of his hands is gripping Patrick’s shirt, the other moving frantically up Patrick’s shoulder to his neck, a thumb on the underside of his chin. “ _You_ ,” he says, his breath skittering over Patrick’s temple and making him break out in shivers.

Patrick sucks in a breath. “Jonny—"

“Hey!” someone calls out behind them, a random voice in the crowd, and Patrick’s suddenly terrified someone will interrupt them. Can’t they see what this is? Can’t they see that it’s everything?

Jonny’s thumb is on his jawline, stroking, rough, and Patrick’s gasping for air. “You’re so—” Jonny says desperately.

“ _Jonny_ ,” Patrick says, and then Jonny’s mouth is on his, open and perfect and everything Patrick’s wanted since he was eighteen.

Patrick melts under it. Jonny’s hand cups his chin, his arm dropping to Patrick’s waist to lift him up. Patrick grabs on and kisses him and tries to tell him everything with that kiss that he hasn’t been able to tell him for the past three years. It’s too much, and he can’t tell him everything—can only hang on and live in the kiss, letting it fill up his whole body until he’s overflowing with the feeling of Jonny.

When they finally separate, Patrick’s heart is thundering and Jonny’s eyes are terrified. “Patrick,” Jonny says, and Patrick wants to put a hand over his mouth. Wants to take him in another kiss, keep him from saying whatever he’s going to say next. “Patrick.” Jonny’s nose presses against his temple, slides along his hairline. “I—I don’t think I can—”

Patrick closes his eyes and lets himself slide down until he’s standing flatfooted again. He knew, he always knew this would happen, if it ever got this far. There was only ever one way this kiss could end.

“Then you shouldn’t,” he says, the words heavy and true on his tongue. He’s thought, sometimes, late at night when he’s imagined this, that he’d rage, beg, scream, plead with Jonny to forget everything else, just care about them, about Patrick. But he can’t. Jonny wouldn’t be Jonny, if he did that. Patrick can’t ask him to destroy himself.

Patrick slides his hands up to cup Jonny’s neck. “I love you more than—” He breaks off. Takes in a shuddering breath. “I love you. And if you can’t. Then.”

Jonny’s arms tighten around him. Patrick feels Jonny’s chest rise and fall against him and tries to memorize it: this one moment, when they’re more open to each other than they’ll ever be again. He wants to remember the smell of Jonny’s neck, the weight of Jonny’s hands on his body, the knowledge that, at least for this moment, he is wanted.

Then Jonny presses his lips to Patrick’s forehead and steps away, and Patrick is alone in an empty corner. The party rages on behind him, but he can barely hear it.


	6. Chapter 6

Patrick doesn’t really remember getting home that night. He’s not that drunk—not nearly enough to black out—but he can’t focus on anything. His eyes keep sliding away from everything he looks at, because it all seems so irrelevant to what just happened in that corner.

“Whoa,” Sharpy says at some point when Patrick’s lost in the crowd. He gets his hands on Patrick’s shoulders. “Someone’s a little out of it. Count to ten for me, Peeks?”

Patrick looks up blankly, and Sharpy laughs and says, “Okay, someone put this kid in a cab.” Then there are hands guiding him, but it all feels so distant, a blur that doesn’t mean anything at all.

He wakes up in the cold light of morning with his body aching like a bruise and turns his face to the wall.

He can hear his family moving around the kitchen making breakfast. Patrick should probably join them, but he doesn’t. He lies there and lets the memory of last night seep into his consciousness.

He was never going to try anything. That’s what he’s been telling himself all these years. And he didn’t—he didn’t try anything. He wasn’t the one who started the kiss. But now that it’s happened it turns out he was lying to himself the whole time, and he was always going to try something someday. When he got braver, or when Jonny gave him the sign he’d been waiting for, and the world finally slid into alignment the way it should have, Patrick was going to kiss Jonny and it was going to be perfect and everything he’d dreamed of.

And now he knows that’s not going to happen.

It’s okay. Patrick can deal with this. He just won the fucking Stanley Cup; he has to be able to deal with this.

It’s another hour before he manages to drag himself out of bed. He finds his family in the kitchen, on their phones or reading the newspaper. “There he is,” his dad says, coming toward him with a big smile and his arms out for a hug. Patrick tries to smile back but isn’t sure he really succeeds.

“Somebody’s hung over,” Erica sings from the table, and their mom tuts.

His dad slaps him on the shoulder. “Let’s get some food in you, I hear there’s more celebrating today.”

Getting through the day’s celebrations is a slog. Patrick never imagined it like this, when he thought about winning the Cup. He keeps getting angry at Jonny for making it like this; then he gets angry at himself, for letting it get to this point; then he’s just desperately trying to put on a happy face so that no one else can tell what’s wrong.

“Where’s Tazer?” Soupy asks at one point, when they’ve made it from the first bar to the second, and Patrick snaps his head around.

“Not feeling well, apparently,” Seabs says, a heavy dose of irony in his voice.

“Aw, baby captain get drunk for the first time last night?” Sharpy says.

Jonny wasn’t drunk last night. Patrick knows: he tasted Jonny’s mouth, and there was no alcohol there. He thinks about saying something—not the mouth thing, obviously—but Jonny’s not his to defend. Jonny’s not his to anything.

He almost was, though. That’s the part of it that keeps catching Patrick around the gut and bringing him up short: that Jonny wanted him back. All these months of Patrick wanting, thinking he was alone and that his feelings were too much and intrusive and creepy, and it turned out they weren’t—Jonny was feeling the same thing. For a few brief minutes they were in it together.

And it didn’t make a difference. Jonny still walked away.

If Jonny had grown up in a different family, if he’d had a different culture, maybe—but would he still be Jonny then? Would Patrick still want him? It’s a dumb question, one Patrick can answer as soon as he asks it: it’s Jonny. Of course Patrick would still want him. That crazy intense determined control-freak good impassioned core that lives inside him. Patrick would always want that.

“Kaner!” Bicks calls, waving him over for another round of drinks, and Patrick puts a smile on top of the crack in his chest and goes.

The day isn’t all terrible. They did win the Cup, after all: sometimes Patrick remembers the thrill of it and manages a smile or a laugh that isn’t completely forced. But by the time they go home to change for the party that night he’s exhausted from trying to keep it up.

“You guys go ahead,” he says when he’s only half dressed, fumbling with his buttons in the mirror, and his parents and sisters have been ready for half an hour.

“How are you the slow one?” Jackie asks. “This, like, never happens.”

“Honey, it’s your night,” his mom says. “We’ll wait.”

Patrick tries to imagine being in the car with them, keeping on a happy face while they jabber away. “No, we don’t fit in one car anyway,” he says, tacking on a smile that feels like it’s actually damaging his cheek muscles. “You go ahead. It’ll give me a chance to call some of the guys from home first.”

They take five more minutes to get out the door. It feels more like an hour. Patrick finally closes the door behind them—and then thirty seconds later it opens again because Jackie forgot her phone.

This time when she leaves again he locks it.

The condo is quiet around him as he stands slumped against the wall of the foyer. He thought it would be better with them gone—and it is, sort of. At least he can stop pretending. But the quiet just lets him feel the hurt more.

It has to get better than this. Patrick isn’t going to survive the next few weeks if it feels like this, like every moment he’s dragging himself up out of a deep, dark well. He’s not strong enough for that. And tomorrow, the fucking parade, the whole city of Chicago watching and all the cameras and—

He’ll just have to drink a lot. Jonny will love that.

Oh fuck, Jonny will be there tomorrow. He’ll probably even be at the thing tonight—it’s an official thing, not just day-drinking. Patrick doesn’t know how he’s gonna handle this. Maybe he can…just go for a few minutes, or hide behind his sisters, or move to Antarctica, or something, because the thought of seeing Jonny right now—

The doorbell rings, and Patrick opens the door to let Jackie in for whatever she’s forgotten now. Except it’s not Jackie.

It’s Jonny.

He’s just standing there, in a white button-down and slacks, and for a moment Patrick can’t speak or think at all. Then he starts to say, “What are you doing here?” but he doesn’t finish because Jonny is already coming in the door.

“Patrick.” Jonny’s hands are on Patrick’s, gripping tight. “Patrick, I’m so sorry.”

Patrick doesn’t know where to look. Jonny’s hands are on his, and—did he come here to apologize? For last night? That doesn’t seem quite right, but Patrick can’t—

“For what?” he asks. He doesn’t love the way his voice is shaking.

“I was at the temple today,” Jonny says.

“Okay,” Patrick says. “So, what, did they suddenly decide you weren’t an abomination, or—”

Jonny makes a little noise like he’s hurt. “I—I’m doing this wrong,” he says, and takes his hands out of Patrick’s to scrub them over his face. Patrick misses them right away—hates that he misses them, hates that Jonny can still affect him this way when he knows he can’t have him.

“Did I ever tell you what the Mormon Church has to say about gay people?” Jonny asks.

“No,” Patrick says. He doesn’t think he wants to know. But he doesn’t say so.

“I’ve heard so many things over the years,” Jonny says. “That gay people are being punished by God. Tested by God. That it’s our own fault, that it’s not even real, that it’s a perversion of the devil, that we have to stop feeling like that, that it’s only feelings and feelings are fine as long as you don’t act on them.”

Patrick frowns, listening despite himself. “But that doesn’t even—”

“It doesn’t make _sense,_ right?” Jonny says. His eyes are back on Patrick, and they’re snapping, fiery. “These are prophets, and they can’t even _agree._ I’ve been reading this stuff for months, trying to find out what I’m supposed to be doing about this, and—and they have no idea. They don’t know _anything._ ”

“So your religion is full of shit,” Patrick says. His heart is racing. “Welcome to the world.”

“It’s not, though,” Jonny says. “I know it’s not. I’ve sat in the temple and—” He breaks off and bites his lip, and Patrick looks away. “I told you I don’t feel God often,” Jonny says, his voice softer now. “It’s not like every day or anything. But I’ve felt Him, and I’ve felt the truth of the church, and that’s why I’ve been trying to hard to make it all make sense. Because for the last couple of months, I’ve also felt like God was giving me you.”

Patrick’s eyes fly up to Jonny’s. Jonny’s looking back at him, unflinching.

“So many times,” Jonny says. “I kept trying to tell myself that I could turn this thing for you into friendship, that anything else was—a test, a lie, a perversion. But every time I thought that I would turn around and run smack into _you._ ”

Patrick’s breathing hard now, not wanting to hope, not wanting to do anything else. “Jonny,” he breathes.

Jonny raises his hand and rests his fingertips on Patrick’s cheek. The touch shudders through Patrick’s body.

“You are so—” Jonny says, cuts himself off. “That’s the thing about the Temple. I was sitting there today trying to accept that I couldn’t have you, that this wasn’t what God wanted for me, that God could put someone like you in my life and not want me to love you in all the ways there are. But it’s really hard to sit in the presence of God and let yourself keep believing a lie.”

Patrick lets out a shaky breath. He’s pressing into Jonny’s hand now, something wild and giddy and terrified singing under his skin. Jonny’s words are—they’re too much. They can’t be true. “But what about the church?”

“I don’t know,” Jonny says. He lets his hand slide down to Patrick’s neck, cradling Patrick’s skull. “I’ll stay if they let me.”

“Even though—”

“So much of it is true, though,” Jonny says. “That’s the thing. I’ve only felt three things that strongly in my life, like God was actually talking to me. I know that the God of the Mormon Church is true. I know that He wants me to play hockey. And I know that—that He wants me to love you.”

Patrick closes his eyes and feels Jonny’s hand on his skin. Jonny’s thumb ghosts over his mouth.

“Everything else,” Jonny says, “I’ll just have to figure out.”

“I want to figure it out with you,” Patrick says. He puts his hands on Jonny’s sides, feels the solidness of his muscles through the thin layers of fabric. “You shouldn’t have to be—we should be figuring it out together. I want you to be…” And Jonny’s pulling Patrick closer, taking Patrick into his arms, and Patrick presses his face into Jonny’s shoulder and lets all the breath shudder out of him.

Jonny’s there. Jonny’s real. Jonny’s _Patrick’s._

It’s too much, and Patrick’s going to burst, so instead he nuzzles his face into Jonny’s neck until Jonny turns his head a little and then his mouth is right there. They’re both breathing hard before their mouths even meet, and then Jonny’s lips are dragging against his, mouth open and welcoming, a million times better than last night. This kiss doesn’t have to end. Patrick can kiss Jonny forever, let the touch burn through him, filling his stomach with fireworks, making his fingers and toes tingle, numb—

Jonny moans and pushes him back against the wall of the foyer, unpracticed and eager and perfect. Patrick scrabbles at Jonny’s shirt and gets his hands on the smooth perfect muscles of his back and feels them shift under his skin as Jonny presses closer. He’s been turned inside out, overwhelmed at the chance to do this. Jonny’s hips glance against his, the hardness of his cock sending sparks across Patrick’s vision and making him buck up—and Jonny stills him with a hand in his chest.

“We shouldn’t,” Jonny says, pulling back just far enough that Patrick can see the swollen redness of his mouth, the desperate heaving of his chest.

Patrick’s whole body clenches. “But I thought you said—”

“We’re still not married,” Jonny says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Patrick starts to laugh.

He can’t help it. It might be hysteria at this point. It’s been a long, long day, and now Jonny’s in his arms—the thing that was never going to happen—and now he’s saying…

Jonny looks like he’s not sure how to handle this. Patrick clings to his shoulders, laughter still spilling helplessly out of him. “Jonny,” Patrick chokes out. “Jonny, your church doesn’t even _let_ …”

“It’s legal in Canada,” Jonny says, and then he’s pulling away and—what is he doing, he’s—oh fuck, he’s—

Patrick isn’t laughing now. He’s staring wide-eyed at Jonny, who’s fallen to one knee on the floor in front of him.

“Patrick,” Jonny says, taking Patrick’s hands. “Patrick Timothy Kane. Will you marry me?”

Patrick can’t believe this is happening. It’s insane. They haven’t even been together an hour, they haven’t even had sex yet, and Jonny’s asking… He’s crazy. He’s a crazy, ridiculous human, and Patrick knows that already, has known it for years, they’ve fought and played and roomed and laughed together and Patrick’s seen him in almost every state you can see another human being in and at the end of it he still—

“Yes,” he says, almost before he even knows he’s going to say it. “Yes, of course, you lunatic, I can’t believe you—”

And then Jonny’s laughing for joy, kissing Patrick’s hands, getting back to his feet and sweeping Patrick into his arms to kiss his mouth, Patrick laughing now, too. “But what about—” Patrick says, struggling to get the words out while still kissing Jonny. “If we—” Fuck, Jonny’s mouth, it’s so… “If we get married, we’re going to have to come out.”

Jonny stills a little. “Yeah,” he says. He gets his fingers in Patrick’s hair, rests their foreheads together. “But—I don’t know. If we’re doing this for real—if it’s right, and good, and we’re not ashamed of it—if we…I don’t think I want to hide it,” he says haltingly. “Do you?”

Two hours ago Patrick had never thought seriously about coming out to the hockey world. Ten minutes ago he’d never thought seriously about marriage. But now—“Yeah. I don’t want to hide, either,” he says, and it feels obvious: the life the two of them can have together, not having to hide in the shadows. Jonny there by his side.

Jonny nods, jaw clenching in emotion, and takes Patrick’s mouth in a long, hard kiss. Patrick kisses back—kisses his fucking _fiance._

It’s not gonna be easy, but they just won a Cup together. There’s nothing they can’t do.

***

_Epilogue_

Sharpy gives them shit about the date of the wedding. “You just _had_ to get married this summer,” he says, shaking his head, once they’ve been through the whole shock and congratulations process and Patrick has maybe cried a little bit (and so has Sharpy, he’s pretty sure, though Sharpy will never admit it). “You’re just trying to steal my thunder.”

“Sharpy,” Patrick says. “You do realize I _can’t have sex_ until we get married?”

Sharpy’s eyes go wide. “Wait, what? Oh my God. Why are you waiting until August?”

Patrick keeps wondering the same thing, actually. Jonny’s okay with making out before the wedding, but he keeps cutting things off just when they’re getting really good, so that Patrick has to slink away and lock himself in the bathroom to avoid the worst case of blue balls ever. “We can’t give ourselves too much temptation,” Jonny says one time when he’s made them stop kissing after half an hour, and they’re lying there panting with their foreheads pressed together.

If you ask Patrick, they’re not doing a great job of that. “Are you sure you want to get married without at least seeing what the sex is like first?” he asks another time, when Jonny’s left him so hard his hips are twitching toward phantom pressure.

Jonny runs a finger along Patrick’s lower lip. “Are you really worried about it?” he asks in a low voice.

“N—no,” Patrick admits, his breath hitching, just wishing Jonny would lean in again—and—

He just wants his hands on Jonny, is the thing. He’s getting really familiar with the skin of Jonny’s back and stomach, the way his muscles will jump under Patrick’s fingers when Patrick does something really good, but he wants to know the rest of him. All those acres of golden skin he’s seen in locker rooms and hotel rooms. He wants to get rid of the clothing barriers, get close enough that they aren’t two separate people anymore.

“I know,” Jonny says when Patrick whispers that to him, late at night when they’re sitting on the couch, leaning against each other and (mostly) keeping their hands to themselves. “I want that, too. That’s what marriage is.”

On the plus side, the sexual tension makes the wedding planning go really smoothly. Patrick’s answer to everything is pretty much, “whatever makes the wedding happen faster,” which goes a long way towards placating two families who were hoping their sons would get married in their respective churches—and to women. Failing that, they at least want the chance to pick out the centerpieces.

By the time August rolls around, Patrick is basically dizzy with lust. He’s not even nervous about the press conference he and Jonny give at the convention about the coming-out statement they issued the week before, because he’s too busy looking at Jonny’s mouth while he talks. Jonny holds his hand for a lot of it, their hands clasped between the two podiums, and every time he rubs his thumb against Patrick’s hand, Patrick gets shivery and forgets what he’s supposed to be saying.

Apparently the press conference goes pretty well, if you believe the news coverage. Patrick’s own memory of it is suspiciously vague.

It’s a week before the wedding when Jonny pulls back from a makeout session that’s getting frantic, as usual, and says, “You know. It would be kind of great if, before the wedding, you, uh. Waited.”

“Waited for what?” Patrick asks. He’s already waiting. It’s taking everything he has not to twitch his hips up against Jonny’s right now; he _knows_ about waiting.

“You know,” Jonny says, low, against his ear. He puts his hand on Patrick’s upper thigh—about as close as he ever gets to his cock. “If you _waited._ ”

Patrick’s blood isn’t really in his brain right now, so it takes him a second to get it. Then, “Oh, _fuck,_ no,” he says, shoving Jonny away so he can’t actually convince him to do anything so insane as not jerk off for the entire week before their wedding.

Jonny arches a brow. “What, don’t think you can do it?”

“Nope, not gonna work,” Patrick says. There are a lot of things he’ll get competitive about—well, most things, honestly, when it’s with Jonny—but he’s not an idiot. He knows when he’s being baited.

“It’s just, it would mean a lot to me,” Jonny says, and Patrick is not listening to this nonsense.

He goes home instead and goes straight to the bedroom. He gets his cock out, still mostly hard from twenty minutes of Jonny’s mouth on his, and the lube, and the tissues, and then he makes a face and puts it all away and pulls out his phone instead. _i hate u,_ he texts Jonny.

He gets a heart emoji back.

By three days later Patrick’s eyes might be permanently crossed. “Seriously, how do you _do_ this,” Patrick says when they’ve barely been kissing for two minutes and he already wants to die. _He’s_ the one who keeps cutting their makeouts short now.

“I guess I just have superior self-control,” Jonny says smugly, and Patrick thunks his head against Jonny’s shoulder and groans. But, oh, that’s some good skin there, so Patrick bites it for a little while and then is even worse off than before.

Don’t even get him started on the wet dreams.

It almost goes too far at the joint bachelor party two days before the wedding. The guys take them to a club in Winnipeg—which, Winnipeg, so it’s not that great a club. But there’s a dance floor, and naturally dancing involves putting your hips together, so Patrick does—just for a second, he swears. But there’s Jonny’s cock, _fuck_ , already half-hard against his, and Patrick doesn’t move away quite as fast as he meant to. It just feels so fucking good to keep grinding just a little bit longer. He expects Jonny to shove him away like usual—but when he looks at Jonny’s face, his eyes are shut, his mouth half-open, like he’s as gone on this as Patrick is, and maybe—maybe they can just, just this once—

“Nope, sorry, boys,” Sharpy says, pulling them apart. “Not tonight.”

Patrick stares at him in outrage. “ _You—_ what the fuck—”

Sharpy just gives him a beatific smile. “As the married man here, it’s obviously my responsibility to chaperone you misguided youths,” he says. “Plus, Jonny asked me to.”

Patrick turns his outraged stare on Jonny, who winces.

“I should never have let you be best man!” Patrick shouts after a retreating Sharpy, who waves with his middle finger and calls out something about dibs.

“Sorry,” Jonny says. His eyes are still dark and keep drifting down to Patrick’s mouth. “I should never have let it get so—”

“No, it was—yeah,” Patrick says, putting his hands on the sides of Jonny’s neck. “Just—the wedding is _soon_ , right?”

“Very,” Jonny says, brushing his thumb over Patrick’s waist and making him shiver.

The wedding itself is kind of a blur. A good blur: Patrick has very clear memories of Jonny’s face during the ceremony, the focal point of everything, looking back at him with those dark eyes like he’s everything in the world. He remembers his mom crying and telling him she’s proud of him; his dad giving him a stiff hug and not saying anything, but his eyes are red. He remembers laughing at Sharpy’s toast and cutting the cake and dancing with all of his sisters and ending up back in Jonny’s arms, spinning slowly on the dance floor as the night winds down.

Their hands are on each other as soon as they’re through the door of the hotel room. Patrick sucks on Jonny’s neck while Jonny pulls at Patrick’s clothes. “Come on, wanna be inside you,” Jonny says, sliding his hands down to Patrick’s ass.

It feels amazing to have his hands there, fingers digging in. “Mm, no, I don’t think so,” Patrick says.

Jonny pulls back, outraged. “What? But—”

“You’ve literally never done this before,” Patrick says (leaning forward to lick at Jonny’s neck again, because, well). “You really think you can last for that?”

“I could last,” Jonny says, furious, and then his head drops down and he shudders as Patrick strokes a hand over his cock through his tux pants. “Oh—Patrick—”

“Yeah, maybe you let me drive the first time,” Patrick says, and Jonny’s too busy gasping for air to argue.

Patrick gets him stripped and laid out on the bed, and his cock is thick and red and swollen and oh, God, Patrick wants to touch it so badly. He gets his hand on it—makes Jonny gasp and buck his hips up—and smears the stickiness of the precome around the head a little. Then he slides down the bed and takes the head into his mouth.

They both moan at the same time. It’s been so long since Patrick’s had a cock in his mouth, and God, he loves it: the soft tender skin, the weight of it filling him up, the acrid bite of the precome. He swallows around the head, and Jonny practically jackknifes off the bed. “Oh, _fuck_ ,” he says.

Patrick pops his mouth off his cock. “You—” Jonny _never_ swears. “Did you just—”

“Well, don’t _stop_ ,” Jonny says, eyes closed and hips still straining up toward Patrick’s mouth, and Patrick sucks him back down.

Patrick’s own cock is throbbing, and it a good thing that doesn’t take long before Jonny’s breathing gets harsh and desperate. He’s pulling at Patrick’s hair, making these high-pitched little noises, and finally he arches his back and says, “ _Oh_ —”

It would have been nice to get warning, but also the flood of come into his mouth is still ridiculously hot. Almost as hot as the way Jonny’s looking down at him, flabbergasted, like he can’t believe what just happened.

“Pretty great, huh?” Patrick says, coming back up the bed, and Jonny just looks dazed as Patrick slides into his arms and kisses him.

He doesn’t take any initiative to get Patrick off—he probably hasn’t figured out how to use multiple parts of his body so soon after coming—but Patrick doesn’t care. He’s kissing Jonny, and he can finally do what he’s wanted to every time he’s been kissing Jonny this whole summer: press his cock against Jonny’s massive ridiculous thigh and rub off. When Jonny finally gets it together to help him, Patrick takes his hand and directs it to his ass.

“Get the lube,” he says, unsteadily—he hasn’t come for a while either—“and you can fuck me after.”

Jonny groans like this is the hottest thing he’s ever heard. “But I already—”

“Trust me,” Patrick says.

Sure enough, he’s good to go again by the time Patrick spurts all over his stomach, three of Jonny’s fingers in his ass and a dumbstruck expression on Jonny’s face. “Can I—right now like this?” Jonny asks, his voice strained. His cock is curving up toward his stomach again, the head an angry red.

“ _Please,_ ” Patrick says, pulling his knees to his chest.

It’s a lot, getting fucked just after he’s come, but Patrick’s always liked the slightly overwhelming feeling of it. He’s not prepared for just how overwhelming it is to have Jonny doing it, though: the way Jonny shudders like he’s been struck when the head of his cock pops in, and then the open-mouthed astonishment on his face as he slides the rest of the way inside.

“I’m really— _Patrick,_ ” he says, leaning forward for a kiss that makes Patrick moan and fear for his hamstrings but what the fuck does he care when Jonny’s inside him like this.

It takes Jonny a little while to get a good rhythm. Patrick’s really glad he made Jonny come first, even if it’s crazy hot the way Jonny’s determined expression keeps getting interrupted by moments of haziness, his eyes unfocusing and his jaw going slack. After a couple of minutes he gets into a groove, though, ridiculous golden muscles working hard, and a minute or two after that he changes his angle slightly and hits—

“Oh fuck, just like that,” Patrick says, arching into it, and it all spirals toward the end after that: every stroke of Jonny’s perfect cock lighting up Patrick’s prostate, Patrick sweating through the sheets and leaking all over his belly and then coming, coming, a moment before Jonny screws up his face and empties himself deep inside him.

When Patrick’s vision clears, Jonny’s face is full of wonder. His eyes are darting between Patrick’s face and the come trickling out of his ass. “Patrick,” he says, coming down into Patrick’s arms. “That was—”

His hands are restless on Patrick’s body, his fingers moving everywhere. “Please tell me you’re not one of those people who has a lot of energy after coming,” Patrick says, though his body is singing and he can’t bring himself to really care.

“You’re so—” Jonny says urgently, and kisses his mouth, licking in like he can’t quite believe Patrick is his to keep.

“We’re going to do that again,” Jonny says firmly, when Patrick has been thoroughly kissed. “Lots of times.”

“Good. You’ve got some time to make up for,” Patrick says. Jonny grins at him, and Patrick realizes it doesn’t feel true: it doesn’t feel like they have anything to make up for at all. Jonny’s his now, forever; Patrick wouldn’t change a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you for reading, and credit to [Josh Weed](http://joshweed.com/2018/01/turning-unicorn-bat-post-announce-end-marriage/), extremely thoughtful gay Mormon, for inspiring a lot of Jonny’s critique of the church there. If you haven't read the post I linked to: it is amazing and made me cry at my desk at work, so beware.


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